O Pioneers! [NOT 15/12/23]

15/12/23 blue dogcollar 12
osage oranges

Do You Know Anything Way Out There?

A few blocks from my house there is a lone Osage Orange tree in a front yard. The owners collect the fruit (aka monkey brains) in piles and buckets for anyone who wants one.

Their original range is only part of Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas, but occasionally they have been planted as curiousities or as hedges, due to their thorns. This lone outsider seems to be a curiousity.

So let’s talk about those brave souls (and things) going far away from their normal territory, pioneers and explorers and homesteaders.

For example, when you were in high school, was there a punk bar you snuck into which played music completely different from any other place 100 miles around? Do you know of a restaurant serving food from Nepal or Ghana or some other far off place which you like, and as far as you know is one of a kind for miles around?

There’s an art glass store I’ve stopped into a couple of times which sells little more than sheets of all colors of glass, and as far as I know is one of a kind in any of the surrounding counties. When I was a kid I vaguely remember a guy with a cart near my dad’s office who sold roasted chestnuts in the winter, and as far as I can remember in the entire city he was the only one.

Man selling nuts from his pushcart, New York City / Fred Palumbo / 1947 / source: https://www.loc.gov/item/2006686038

Is there a temple for a unique religion you see from time to time? A club for fans of a new foreign pop star which meets in a bar you go to and monopolizes the karaoke machine? Maybe you know someone who was the first to grow a certain type of flower, or you had a high school music teacher who taught songs from a country nobody else had visited? Or maybe you have a great aunt who got her pilot’s license and was the only woman flying out of the local airfield.

There are pioneers all over, staking a claim and standing bravely for something different in the middle of an indifferent world. Who can you talk about?

avataravataravataravataravataravataravataravataravatar

12 Comments

  1. The very unique religion of Koreshan Science started here in Chicago in an auditorium that still stands in the Engleweood neighborhood.  That was back in the 1890s.  They later moved to Estero, Florida and now they’re pretty much all gone, but the entire group made quite a splash way back when.

    I only know this because a friend of mine’s specialty is strange cults of Chicago.

    https://chicagoreader.com/city-life/when-koreshan-science-invaded-the-south-side/

    • Teed predicted that he would be killed by the angry husbands of his female followers, but would become, in his words, “theocrasized,” which would allow him to lead his flock in astral form.

      OMG!

      • One of my friend’s (OH NO! BRACE FOR IMPACT!) mother had a very interesting 1970s, and got involved in all kinds of woo. She lived well into her 80s so maybe there was something to it.

        The first time I met her (her husband had deserted her and she began following some charlatan “spiritual leader”) we started talking about religious beliefs. Mind you, this woman was one of the WASPiest and well-bred women I’ve ever met. Katharine Hepburn in “The Philadelphia Story” had nothing on her. I said, “I was raised a Christian but very haphazardly and I can’t really say—”

        “So Jesus is your guru?”

        “Christians don’t really think of Jesus that way. Do they?” She was a little crazy. Her husband left her for a woman with one of the most grating Midwestern accents I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard plenty, believe me, and the kids all hated her, but I always liked her. We both recognized that we were punching above our weight class-wise but humor (in my case) and sex appeal (in her case) opened a lot of doors.

  2. My wife wanted to go to a small town a few weeks ago & go to a few stores & have an early dinner at a famous Bistro.  The owners are about to retire & everyone knows so we couldn’t get reservations.  We told different friends that story on different nights & they thought it was the place run by Washington’s most famous cult.  This family that runs it are from the Caribbean & not related to the Love family but both sets of friends told us crazy stories about the Love family.

    https://www.historylink.org/file/9313

    • Women for the most part were busy with household chores; a small cadre of teachers and nannies looked after the growing number of children.

      Joan Didion in Slouching Toward Bethlehem observed the fairly creepy tendency among a lot of supposedly counterculture types in the late 60s to reinforce a lot of the most sexist tendencies of the society they were supposed to be rejecting.

  3. I grew up being told hedge apples are good to leave by your doors as insect repellents. We never tried it though because the dogs were dumb enough to try to eat anything reminiscent of tennis balls.

  4. i dropped out of school when i was 14 mate..

    4 years later i got fully qualified as a panel beater

    anyhoo….guess when chinese replacement parts got cheap….

    and thats why i now build fancy coffee machines

Leave a Reply