When I was a freshman in college I loved, adored, worshipped Ralph Waldo Emerson. The fact that my first serious college romance was to a guy named Ralph is probably not entirely coincidental.
Emerson began keeping a journal while he was a student at Harvard, and he kept it faithfully well into his later years. I wanted to emulate my literary hero and so, in a dimly lit college dorm room on the 23rd of January 1974, I began typing on my 1924 Royal typewriter, “Ralph Waldo Emerson….” I don’t remember the rest of the sentence, but I felt very learned, scholastic, educated.
In my journal I wrestled with feelings about my past, realities about my present, and decisions about my future. On those pages I dreamed dreams and painted visions of the person I wanted to become, and I walked toward those images as surely as if it were a map. Barely a day passed that I did not type something in it.
By 1992 my journal had accrued to over 1750 single spaced typed pages, bound in three ring binders. And one day I quit writing in it. I removed the papers from the binders, boxed them in a large plastic box with other things that I no longer used but didn’t want to get rid of. When we moved ten years ago we were short of inside storage space. We put several large plastic containers in the loft in the barn.
Our story now shifts dramatically and tragically as I introduce you to Amelia, the nastiest goat God ever made in the entire history of the world.
My boy was just a little guy at the time. One day in mid March, just after school, he came into the kitchen and asked me, “Did you know the big white goat can get up in the loft?”
“Amelia?” I replied dispassionately as I stirred the beans. “Hand me the salt, will you, Honey?”
“Yes,” he said. “And she’s eating something.”
“Probably just some left over hay,” I answered absently. “Taste this. What do you think?”
“It looks like paper.”
I added more salt.
“But I don’t think it’s hay,” he said.
“It’s not hay. It’s beans.”
“Not the beans. I mean, what ‘melia is eating. It looks like paper.”
“It couldn’t be paper,” I said reassuringly. “There’s no paper at the barn except my….” I stopped, frozen with terror at the dawning reality. I screamed something I probably should not have screamed in front of my boy, dropped the fork into the pan of beans, did not bother to turn down the stove, and shot out the front door.
“Amelia!” I am sure George down at the store heard me. In case he did not, I repeated it relentlessly, loudly, uselessly for the next fifteen minutes.
I didn’t even bother to open the gate to the barnyard. I glided over it with the strength of an Olympian. Unfortunately, it had been raining for two days. Equally unfortunate was the fact that the gate to the barnyard is on the top of a small hill, the barn is at the foot of said hill, and despite possessing in that moment an Olympian’s strength, I also possessed the grace of drunk mouse in the bottom of a mostly empty beer bottle.
Have you ever seen a drunk mouse in the bottom of a mostly empty beer bottle? I have, and I can tell you, it is a very sad thing to behold.
As I landed in the mud soaked ground on the other side of the gate, I did the splits, rolled halfway down the hill, slid the rest of the way, and crashed into the side of the barn, two feet from Amelia. She looked at me and casually continued chewing. The top right hand corner of the paper read “874.”
I regained a poor but passable semblance of footing and reached out to her, slipped in the mud, called her every name but Amelia. She trotted away from me, her tail twitching.
Pages from my journal covered the hillside. Gusts of springtime breezes gathered the random pages and they floated like leaves through the cool spring air.
Amelia trotted all over that hilly barnyard, snatching pages every few steps, chewing, swallowing. I slipped and cussed at her heels. Occasionally she baa’ed at me and while I have never mastered the linguistical nuances of goat-ese, I am confident that her meanings included references to my biological heritage and recommendations about what I could do pertaining to various orifices of my anatomy.
She was just that sort of a goat.
I snatched Amelia by her tail. We both went down in the mud. She had page 1106 in her mouth. I yanked it out her mouth. She bit my finger, baa’ed more obscenities, kicked me, and raced for the nearest piece of journal she could find.
It began raining again, and the wind picked up, and still I chased Amelia all over that hillside, and still she eluded me.
The ending of our sad tale is predictably tragic, the redundancy of the action boring. There are just so many ways one can write, “I fell down in the mud, Amelia trotted just out of my reach, I got mud in my mouth, she got journal pages in her mouth, I screamed naughty words at her, she bleated naughty words back at me.” See what I mean?
Eventually there were no journal pages left on the rain drenched hillside, though a couple had found refuge high in the branches of our walnut tree. Amelia leaped effortlessly, triumphantly up to the top loft, and curled up in a nest of muddy, crumpled, half eaten paper with faded type from a 1924 Royal typewriter. I stood in the rain, helplessly looking up at her through the open barn window.
She was munching on page 1542 as she stared down at me. I'm pretty sure she gave me the hoof.
note: The picture above is NOT Amelia. I could never bring myself to take a picture of Amelia. This is Nellie, who is the model of goat perfection, and a wanna be actress.
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Comments
r~
Amelia WAS wicked.
Hmm
Okay, of course I know I would have grabbed more than her tail.
That darn goat just kept swallowing your life down, because it had been THAT good. She swallowed your memories on paper Kit, but you still have them in your brain.
Well, if you are like me you don't. But I bet she had one heck of a 'memorable' belly ache.
Rated with hugs
Matt - Thanks!
Sheba - LOL! Similar tale, different characters. Though I expect your son's fate wasn't as bad as Amelia's....
cartouche - she did have a little bit of red around her mouth. I just assumed it was the lipstick that was also in the container.
Joan - Indeed!
oh, joy, you ain't LIVED till you've been kissed by a goat. Although, as I think back on it, the extent of my relationship with Amelia consisted mostly of exchanging obscenities.
anna - Yes. As far as I know, she's alive and well and eating someone else's journal....
CC - Were that I WAS KID-ding!
Owl - understood! This happened years ago and I only now can write about it without tearing up.
Dave - I did continue to write - but I've never kept a journal since.
jonathan - Thank you, sir!!
happy - I know. I heard you. It was as if you were sitting right behind me!
HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
I'm sure glad we can laugh about it now!
Wismom - Well, I've never tasted goat. But not long after this event a couple of Muslim guys came by wanting to know if I had any goats for sale. I was tempted, you know what I mean????
dianaani - Yeah, Nellie is cuter than Monkey Sue, but Monkey Sue looks better in sunglasses than Nellie does. I liked that paragraph, too, but I think my favorite one is about the drunk mouse in the bottom of the beer bottle. Hmmm. Maybe I should write a blog about the drunk mouse.
when i was in grad school, my other dog pulled a term paper out of the notebook, in my backpack, and proceeded to eat the bottom corners of the last several pages. either she didn't like Henry James or she didn't agree with the professor's comments.
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Giga - yes. We can all laugh at it. Now. Ella Rose was laughing as she read this today and she recollected HER version of the story, which included me flailing my arms, praying to God almighty AND the Blessed Virgin Mother, and ultimately lying face down in the mud weeping in defeat. She did agree, however, that Amelia gave me the hoof in the end. Or thereabouts.
Jan - Thank you! They say there is only a thin line between tragedy and comedy. I expect "they" are correct.
Oh, lemon, you ain't LIVED til you've seen a droopy eyed mouse swaying back and forth in an almost empty beer bottle!
Bernadine - Oh oh. The bar has been raised?? I might be in deep doodoo....
Secondly, obviously the 1500 plus pages of journal have much to do with your writing skills now (it started as a gift--a gift which you honed and developed over the years with impassioned practice)
And third, a question, how did your son react to Mom flying through the mud in chase of a recalcitrant goat?
Linda, as a matter of fact. Yes. My boy, now 16, is shepherding her and her little friend Willie on the east hillside today. He just called me. I told him the news. He giggled and said he would let her know right away.
Walter - 1st - Yes, it is hysterical to me now. My family still asks me to retell this story at gatherings, and we all get quite a kick out of it. I thought it was time to put it in writing.
2nd - You know, I had never thought about it like that but you may well be right. It probably did hone some skills for me, and helped discipline my thinking as well. And 3rd. How did my boy react to me flying through the mud? He did what he does so often around here. He laughed at me. And then he helped me up the hill. Bless his heart!
Anthony - You're a wise man. Unfortunately, my cats peed in my 1924 Royal typewriter two years ago and rusted it beyond repair. I think there is a conspiracy in my home!
Well, think about it. Amelia was a literary goat or something. She wanted to be one with the art, I guess.
Extremely funny post. May I say, one of your best.
R
This was hilarious and I think Amelia, the goat is now one of my favorite literary characters. I know it was traumatic at this time but what a great tale!
Donna and Chuck - Ain't it the truth!
AHP - Oh, I'd love to meet Torman and trade goat stories - I'll bet he's got some GOOD ones!
Dorieann - LOL! I would never have imaged Amelia being a great literary character. The devil incarnate, yes.
Becky - Keep it up! And for God's sake, keep it away from goats!!!!
But I still suggest roast goat as an entree at your next family gathering. I hear they are good with curry.
R! :]
Sheila - Thanks! I was thinking about calling it something like Thought for Food, or My Words are Total Crap, something like that....
Irish - Oh, I have embarrassed myself so many times with my kids I doubt there's much that would surprise them. Besides, they know I plan on haunting them so I think they will behave.... I mean, honestly - can you imagine having me as a ghost in your house????
Leah - Glad you smiled!
Fetlock - Nellie is a boer, but Amelia was some kind of French or Swiss goat, I can't remember offhand which kind. Everyone else has done well with fences, except for Amelia's son Peabody. I have a 7 foot fence line in the back of the lot and I have watched him climb all the way up and fall over the side, then run the fence line up to the back of the house, get up on the roof of our cottage, and hop down into the back yard to play with our Dober-people.
The fence line is still there. Peabody went to live with a family who had better fences. I understand he's been busy making little baby goats. He was an awfully nice guy.
scanner, I wish you'd been there, too!
ladyslipper, Critics!