In and Out, What blew in,Those Damn Progressives

Well, they, whoever they are, are fond of saying that “March blows in like a Lion and, well, you know the rest.” That’s the problem with proverbial sayings; like my dentures, they wear over time and eventually end up on the shelf. Anyway, we don’t have lions or lambs out here in Dustspec; the closest thing we’ve ever had to the former was the Wandering Historian’s pet Buffalo, Emerson, and, while large and mangy, never had much of the regal in him:

I suppose, given our diminished circumstances out here on the sweeping, beige arc of dirt that we couldn’t have a “king of beasts anyway”; I guess we have to be satisfied with a bison in a sack. In any event, no lions about. Nor do we have lambs, save for the occasional stray left behind by a traveler. More on them in a bit. So, our weather can’t arrive, in a monthly way, according to the traditional proverb. So, I propose a contest, with the winner getting a free beverage paid by me from Stuntz’s Emporium. Dustspec needs a meteorological proverb for the upcoming month. Like it or not, March is going to be here and there’s not much we can do about it. So, what do you think? Does it, perhaps, come in like windblown wall of dirt



And leave like a weary peddler?


It’s up to you. Anyway, it is all about the wind; we all know that. As the Good Book, and I don’t mean Vizzini’s “Manual for Young Ferriers,” says “it blows where it wills.” Of course, it’s not the wind that’s generally the problem; it’s what it propels. More often than not, it is the tiny grains of sand that give you boils or make your cattle bellow—just ask Thunderclap about what it did to his herd last week; sometimes, however, transport “causeth delight,” as the old hymn says, and that’s why we do have reason to rejoice about the gales of Dustpec this week. For they deposited Zephyr Frish in our midst. He decided to stay behind when the “Kellog’s Travelling Players” left after one performance of “An American Tableau Vivant Inspired by Ibsen.” The tortured contures of bourgeois life don’t fit very well on the flattened plain of agrarian survival out there. I guess it was also the polka rendition of “Ghosts” that finally did them in. Go ask Misses Andersen and de la Trinidad and they’ll give you a review. It’ll be unanimous. Zephyr was with them doing their publicity posters and I guess he realized that, while a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, having a corrugated tin roof over your head in Dustpec is better than ending up destitute in a culvert outside of Liberal, Kansas surrounded by a group of angry thespians. We are glad to have him; he will add fresh fuel to the raging fire of artistic accomplishment that is our Dustspec. Perhaps he’ll join Lightening down at the Tack Store; maybe she’ll tear herself away from reading Stefan Georg; I’d love to see a “magic lantern show”; how about “The Great White Fleet: Columbia’s Glorious Progress or Imperialist Sword on Which America Will Eventually Impale Herself?”



Hard to say. I’ve been reading Freud. My libido, I confess, is for the battleship. Of course, not everyone in our great, if somewhat lurching, Republic, is in favor of such things (battleships, I mean, not graphic design or magic lantern shows.) On the one side, you’ve got those Anti-Imperialists, men like Summers, whom, I admit, I have read on more than one occasion to Mayor Pearson, Hoots, and Trapper Matt down at Stuntz’s. They certainly have nodded on occasion, though I’m not sure if that has meant approval or fatigue. You can’t tell all that much from the movement of the head; it is fist that tends to be more revelatory. Beyond the Anti-Imperialists, however, you’ve got THOSE DAMN PROGRESSIVES, who are maddening in their variety. You’ve got muck-rakers getting PROGRESS ALL OVER MY BOOTS; you’ve got SOCIALISTS heaving bombs at my dugout; you’ve got DEWEY, DAMN, DAMN DEWEY who thinks that the material and efficient causes are somehow more important than the FINAL CAUSE. Great Chain of Being, anyone knows that a seed and a hoe are important but they aren’t an ear of corn, let alone corn pudding. Boy I love corn pudding; the Wandering Historian’s wife makes a mighty fine corn pudding. I’d recommend it. Of course, Miss de la Trinidad does a fine salsa; goes well with the corn. Corn is a lot like living in Dustspec. Once you get beyond the tattered exterior, there is some value. In any event, back to those DAMN PROGRESSIVES. I am all in favor of equal rights; learned that at the sanatorium. Even a man who thinks he is a lampshade sometimes is the first to hear the thunder. But they are going to far because they are telling me that THEIR NOTION OF PROGRESS is the only one. While I do not agree with his polytheism, Symmachus had it right in his defense of the Altar of Victory when he told Bishop Ambrose that “surely there must be more than one road to such a great mystery.” Well, the poets say America is a dream; Trapper Matt sometimes says “America is a loon screaming at dawn,” I say America is a mystery for sure, and you can’t tell me that a bunch of EAST COAST SOPHISTICATES WEARING DERBIES have the only roadmap back to the CITY ON THE HILL. Great, it’s the early twentieth century. Turner tells us the frontier is closed. So now I am trapped alongside ALL THOSE DAMN PROGRESSIVES.


So, at the end of the day, we are stuck , aren’t we? We’re going to get progress whether we like it or not. And with it comes its prophets. As Hoots opined just the other day, “they are like a dead pellican. They are difficult to work with and, once finished, hard to ignore.” I depart on a more cheerful note. In the stress and strain of daily life, a life filled with dust, tumbleweeds, and the occasional terrified cat hurtling past—blown on the winds of change—let us remember that simple amusments often afford the most relief:


I realize we do not, as yet, have a Bowling Alley, let alone a Bowling Congress—which sounds a far more reasonable and useful gathering than the one in Washington—but one can only hope.

Till next week… “Hope Springs Eternal.” That may be true, but “Reality Lands Flat all the Time.”