| 13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:  I seen the dummy!, January 19, 2005
I recommend reading Linda Linguvic's review, she is dead right. Reading Ms. O'Connor stories is time well invested, and I agree one at a time is about all you can to digest, its like Harper Lee meets Edger Allan Poe. I always find myself in surreal situations that remind me of a Flannery O'Conner story...STOP READING AT THIS POINT AND GO TO LINDAS REVIEW...You see I am in a witness protection program and the only way I can communicate with my family is through Amazon...sad but false.Which reminds me of when I was a kid visiting my grand parents and favorite uncle in North Carolina (we stayed with them every summer until they told my folks to stop). My mom, grandparents,uncle and brother went a visitin' some obscure relatives in a town that seemed to make my grandfather grumpy, reckon that would have been any town USA. However this particular town was near another particular town that held something of interest, the spaghetti man, or as my grandfather called him the dummy. They called him the spaghetti man because he was Italian, he had worked for a circus and happened to die in the nearby town I mentioned, back in the early 20th century is my guess. The manager of the circus only gave the local funeral director a deposit for the burial with the promise of returning with final payment, which never came. So the Spaghetti man/mummy/dummy remained in his freezer for years. The son inherited the business as well as the dummy as I will refer to him from this sentence on until the end of my review. Well back in the 60's my brother, uncle and to a lesser degree myself badgered my grandfather enough that he agreed to leave the family gathering to go find the dummy. He found the town just fine it being on the map and all, but had to ask directions to find the dummy "where's the dummy"? after several blind alleys we found the funeral home and in the garage the owner took us for a small fee to the garage, he opened the freezer and there in the flesh was a shrunken up freezer burnt dummy! One of those moments you never forget, a certain smell might take you back or a foreign accent, but you dont forget those memory's by god! cause that's what life's made of, memories and things like that, eating too. Years later in the year 2000 I visited my folks in NC and in honor of the dummy I went to Target and purchased a white T shirt a couple of sizes to big and a black marker. I laid the T-shirt on my kitchen table and scrawled "I seen the dummy" across the front and into the armpit. The next day I showered,shaved and put on my new shirt, drove to the airport early , requested exit row (I'm above average in height you know) and flew to Charlotte. I then boarded a commuter plane to New Bern and the flight attendant asked me what my shirt said and I told her "I seen the dummy" ...Even though I was in the front row and she had to sit in the jump seat in front of me she was sort of cool and impersonal the rest of the flight, people you figure them out? If you like reading, buy Flannery O'Conner its not a walk in the park but you aint no dummy now are you? |
10 Comments:
I gotta tell you, the story is true, all but the freezer part. I don't remember the Dummy being in a freezer, it was a small cabinet to the best of my 3rd grade memory.
Grad Daddy didn't want to go look at the Dummy, but Uncle, Brother and I pestered him into a hell bent trip to see the Dummy.
We sped across the peidmont of NC to an unremembered town. Then I remember driving around town asking "Where's the Dummy?" God, like it was yesterday. "Where's the Dummy?"
My grandfather was a Game Warden and had a gun and a badge and when he pulled into town looking for the Dummy, he meant buisness.
We finally got to the funeral home and I don't remember the owner being there, we just burst into the open garage door and he flung the door open on this little white cabinet and much to my amazement was a leathery little skelaton of a man, standing upright in his case, a hole smashed through his skull and a white cloth over his private's.
A good "God Damnit, there's the Dummy!" and we were back on a wild drive back home and the argument that meant the evening news was on.
No wonder I spend my time alone in a dark room with my cyber friends.
Mom
toilets: Huh. You being about twelve years older than myself I trust your memory, but I all I am certain of is I seen the dummy.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Every body just wait till I tell the story about Josh, Uncle and Grand Daddy leaving me at the peach farm!
It makes the Dummy search like a normal family outing.
Mom
toliets: It was my idea.
I think the reviewer should paragraph more.
Other than that, this is one of the best reviews I have ever reviewed.
zen: High praise, and upon review I could probably paragraph more, thanks for the props. JW
To change the subject a wee bit...
I always heard it was a hard man is good to find.
Hope you have a hard day...I mean good! ;)
lee ann - ROTFL, I think you are rigth here, hahahahaha
lee ann: Yes I have heard that variation muyself, but I must admit it makes me a little uneasy to think of hard men reading my blog, I hope they are in repose so to speak.
Mone: I think your mind as well as lee ann's mind are in the gutter, I think the gutter must be a wonderful place.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home