Tales of the Black Freighter

TALES OF THE BLACK FRIEGHTER……………

“FELT CLEANSED, FELT DARK PLANET TURN UNDER MY FEET AND KNEW WHAT CATS KNOW THAT MAKES THEM SCREAM LIKE BABIES IN NIGHT” – Rorschach’s Journal.

Exhibit A.- R.T. Gault Master of the Obscure

          The Watchmen series written by the great Alan Moore with Dave Gibbons and John Higgens is arguably one of the greatest comic stories ever told. Recently, I picked up a copy at the USO while serving in Al-Asad, Iraq. Just looking at the distinct cover transported me through time and space to the summer of 1986. I started reading this only at the behest of my local comic shop guru, R.T. Gault. R.T. owned and operated the infamous Centaur Books & Comics of Tullahoma, Tennessee. It was literally a den of obscure grimoires and books that chronicled events and ancient societies that occurred/worked in hushed whispers and indecipherable code. And I, Garry W. Shores was his ardent and paying disciple. He said read, I read. Where the hell were my parents when I was out there listening to middle-aged anarchists and misanthropes sharing their favored reading lists with impressionable 14 year olds? Waiting out in the car, hoping I’d hurry the hell up so they can go home I suppose.             

               The Watchmen was unlike anything I had ever read before. Words such as “captivating” or “fascinating” are mere descriptors, and do little to capture the grandeur or scope this work possesses. Compulsive, obsessive, majestic, and staggering in breadth and meaning are more accurate, for me. Little did I know, The Watchmen would become a touchstone to the past, to quality, and a guidebook for the stories that would continue to resonate in my life. It started when I was 14.

               I didn’t understand. I still don’t understand all the layers and meanings wrapped in this story. In the future, The Watchmen will be studied in the same circles as Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and Melville’s Moby Dick. It is filled with amazing characters that are given depth and room to move and explore a dystopian America on the verge of nuclear holocaust. How these characters interact, move, and feel are what give The Watchmen much of its appeal and strength. I was obsessed with the madness and savagery of Rorschach, the cruelty of the Comedian and the entire “Dystopian Nixonian” universe they all inhabit. It was amazing and at the first reading, I didn’t get it. I just knew that I loved the story, loved the characters, and treasured my 12 original copies. Lovingly, they were housed in the finest mylar with acid free card board backing, and housed securely in my acid free card board comic storage container. I’d take them out to reread every year or so, or “when I got a hankering”. Going back and rereading, I patiently read the supplemental materials, “Under the Hood” and Rorschach’s file being some of favorites.

“This city is dying of rabies. Is the best I can do to wipe random flecks of foam from its lips?” Rorschach’s Journal.

               Moore’s ability to uplift base genres and transmute them into pure gold is unquestionable. It is truly amazing the elements he brought to bear in The Watchmen. First class storytelling, background details/history, coupled with the allegory of The Black Freighter storyline packs an additional “one-two” punch that the original Nite-Owl would be proud of. The accolades The Watchmen has received go without mention. However, in my world (the only one that matters to me) I easily rank The Watchmen in my top 10 reading list. This series develops characters, and the characters drive the plot to it grim and strangely uplifting conclusion. Moore develops characters, that while superhuman, insane, or misguided are thoroughly identifiable as human. Moore allows you to understand their motivations and desires. He shows you their quirks, and lays the human condition bare. This to me is essential. He creates an unraveling world and populates it not with supermen or mutants but with people, people with a story.

“We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another’s vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.” Jon Osterman aka Dr. Manhattan.

The Watchmen is not perfect, but its close and what it gets right, it gets it in spades. The artistic team of Gibbons and Higgens do a remarkable job of pacing and doing all the things to tell story visually. The detail offered in the frames is amazing, propelling the storyline, and visually reinforcing The Watchmen’s themes. The amount of visual information, multitude of literary styles, and depth make The Watchmen worthy of multiple readings.

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.” C.G. Jung

                       

    

Summer is around the corner, and Dogwood Spring has brought a welcome chill to the air. It’s a mild one compared to past years with unexpected frosts, and chill temperatures. I’m at home, the ancestral home of Cowan, Tennessee. My parents raised me here. Dad is buried in the Cowan Cemetery, Mom will be there tomorrow. Her passing/death (They say you shouldn’t sugar coat, it but I like to say passing. The way you transition from size 10 to 11 in shoes, or the way liquids transition to gases when heat is applied.) is not really surprising, but it’s always surprising. It’s expected, but unexpected.

 I’ve decided to go for a run. Running slower now, but I’m fine with that. I jog through Cowan passing the small houses, kids play in the yard. My pack jostles up and down. It’s a balmy 65F or so, and breeze is hitting me in the face as I turn the corner, and head down to Slag Town. Slag Town, is named for the mountains of slag (the by-products of iron ore production) that make up a goodly portion of its geography. I cross the bridge, over a rain swollen creek I head up the hill to the cement plant. I turn on to the tracks, and make for the Cowan Train Tunnel. I’m running on large gravel; my ankles threaten to turn with every step. This sucks.

In contrast to the rocks below, the sky above is so blue it hurts your teeth. Wispy clouds glide past the great lapis blue backdrop. The land around me is budding/blooming everywhere. Life is waking from its winter nap. I startle a flock of turkey’s and watch as the rapidly take to the air and fly some hundred yards down the track. Magnificent birds, once rare now common. It’s nice to see them back. A lot of bad things are going on in the world, but when I see the return of hawk’s and turkey’s I feel a little better. At least were getting a few things right.

I’m running up now and around a bend, the old/disused railroad track turn to the right. The main track moves East. The track gets easier, the big gravel are almost gone. I’m running up what we know around here as “The Goat Track” it used to run from Cowan to Monteagle and beyond. At the time of its building it was the steepest railroad in the world climbing 1200 feet in just 7 miles. The Plateau has been logged mercilessly over of the years. Looking around the oaks, hickories, and walnuts are budding, the understory is near barren. Occasionally some phlox, but nothing more. The air is crisp, the wind chills. I’m soaked in sweat. The track makes a sweeping arc, and I hear the steady rhythm of a train running the track. Reaching the tunnel, the train passes below and I watch with satisfaction as it rushes out of the tunnel and snakes around the bend. My Grand-daddy used to be a Breakman on this line. “The Tunnel” as we call it is carved through solid limestone for some 2,200 feet, and for years it was supposedly the longest tunnel in the world (doubtful in my opinion). Nearly every child in Cowan has likely ran through that tunnel at one point or another. My brother Greg, has been in there with a train running through. He says the sound is deafening. Greg’s been through it about six times. One time, his Scoutmaster led him and six other kids through it, just so they wouldn’t have to make the lung-busting hike over the top. Nobody died.

Moving on, I’m confronted with a sturdy fence, warning me to advance no further. Like the Black Knight in some ridiculous comedy it warns of dire consequences to all who would dare to violate the sanctity of the land owners rights. Typically, I’m fairly respectful of such things. However, the Law of imminent domain is not so kind. The signs warn of the dire consequences to befall any persons engaged in: hunting, trapping, bird watching, clam digging, poaching, and fishing. It makes no mention of picking up your trash, which unfortunately is in abundance. I do not understand these people that make so much about being outside when all they do is ride around in their big trucks, motorcycles, and four-wheeler tearing everything up slinging bottles/cans out the window. I’ve been coming up here off and on for the last thirty years, and I’ll be damned and double damned if any gate/signs warning of video surveillance are gonna prevent me from my God-given right to bust my lungs running up the Cumberland Plateau on this beautiful day. Smiling large for potential video surveillance I duck around the fence, too easy.

Trudging on, they’ve plastered no trespassing, no hunting, no gambling signs every few feet. I don’t let it spoil my time here on the old railroad track. I keep on trucking. Trucking and thinking, as kids, we’d hike up here, probably scared my parents to death. There was little else to do at the time. Spending time in the woods was preferable to exploring the ruined recesses of the decades abandoned cement plant whose closing had nearly bankrupted the town.

Growing up in Cowan, my Mom had lived in Slag Town (the South-West corner of Cowan, closest to the rock quarry) with her brothers and sisters. The train ran within 20 feet or so of her back porch. Mom was born in 1934, and grew up during The Great Depression and WWII. Those early experiences undoubtedly provided her with a certain set of experiences and skills that would shape her future. Mom (Mrs. Shores, to you great and many unwashed masses) could paint, cook, fix, and make do with what was available. Once, when either Dad was sleeping or at work she put new shocks on our old Plymouth. She painted nearly every room in the house we lived at on 202 Hines Street. The house at 202 Hines is small. It’s probably 800 square feet, compared to today’s houses it would be considered a bonus room.

My Mom, Betty Lou Shores a marvelous woman who suffered

from crippling mental illness (depression/bi-polar disorder) passed away quietly the morning of the 31^st of March and was buried at the Cowan Cemetery April 2^nd, 2017. She is interred next to her loving husband of some 62 years. They are together again at last, and that is all the hope I have. Mom was a very hard worker. She knew her job, and did it well. She supported my Dad to the utmost sometimes she led him with a carrot sometimes a switch, but they were always devoted to each other come what may. She lost her first son in James Vaughn Shores when they lived in Flint, Michigan. He was only one day old. This exacerbated Moms mental health issues. She struggled with depression and bi-polar disorder her entire life. She endured multiple institutions, electro-shock therapy, and a near twenty-year addiction to valium. I remember the days when she would lock herself in her bedroom for days on end, and I remember the days she read to me and let me help in the kitchen. Despite these handicaps, she gave all she could to her children. Despite this, don’t think it was all gloom, doom, and deep sighing at the human condition in the Shores household.

Betty Lou Shores was the best cook imaginable. She made cookies that would make a Chihuahua slap a bull dog right in the mouth. There was no cookie that was beyond her grasp from chocolate oatmeal no-bakes to the absolute best chocolate chip cookies, Mom made them all. For Halloween, she’d make molasses and caramel popcorn balls. We sit and hand them out to those we deemed worthy of such awesomeness. Mainly, my friends and those with really cool costumes.  You name it my Mom made it, from chicken and dumplings to roast turkeys, the best smells you can imagine came out of a kitchen no bigger than a closet.

She supported me throughout my life. Through Scouting, the Navy, University, and then the Navy again. Mom was always proud of us. All of us have been successful despite not having a lot of monetary resources. What we did have was a Mom, Dad, and Grand Parents that cared about us, and managed to get a few things right. I feel that my Mom reading to me has really helped me beyond anything she could have realized. Some of my most cherished moments are sitting next to her while she read to me. My favorite books were about Badgers that ate too much Jam, or mice that lived-in bottles, snowy days, Big Red Dogs, and an Alligator that went to sea. We also did lots of Saturday afternoon matinees at the Oldham Theater, and the Library. We went every Saturday, sometimes more, and we would all spend a great deal of time there. Mom was an avid reader, and I often read the books she was reading. Mainly travel/explorer nonfiction. Mom had really wanted to go live in Alaska at one point. What would have happened to the Shores Clan if she’d talked Dad into that one? 

What strikes me most about my Mom was her kindness and selflessness to me. She literally gave me the shirt off her back at times. She always made sure I had nice clothes, went to church, and didn’t starve to death, or get hit by a car, or abducted by strangers. She consistently provided for me materially and spiritually. Mom and Dad weren’t perfect by any means, but they were there. Whether you liked it or not they were always around to help. I remember the best birthday cakes, Easter baskets, and Christmas’s with my family. Those days are gone forever, but I remember. If you needed an example of someone that is devoted, hard-working, loving, and thoughtful you would need look no further than my mother. My parents are heroes to me in that they did so much for us with so little.

I continue this run, sweating and climbing up the Plateau of my youth. The Goat Track used to be navigable by vehicle. Now, you’d be hard pressed on a mountain bike. I clamber gracelessly over

massive oaks that’ve fallen over the trail and duck under many fallen branches. Several of the culverts have silted up, causing the water to cut deep trenches into the old track effectively barring all but the most determined explorers. I am determined. Soon, I start to see more vegetation. Toad Shade Trillium, Blood Root, and Spring Beauty to name a few. Limestone/Sandstone cliffs begin to rise precipitously high and a cool breeze is on the rise. I slow to walking, taking in all the grandeur. I know, it’s all been logged a million times, there’s the occasional trash pile, but still despite all this it’s beautiful to me. Looking down I find a bent/warped railroad spike from what must be a million years ago. I pick up and set it out on a rock, where hopefully someone else will be able to appreciate it. It’s a great day, and I’ve got more distance to cover before I rest.