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Because I don’t have enough in my life that’s half started and never finished, I began writing a fantasy story last night based on a true life premise: Every time I drive from Freeville to Dryden, my odometer reads 3.3 miles. But every time I drive from Dryden to Freeville, my odometer reads 3.0 miles. What happens to that one-third of a mile, huh?
Freeville is the little hamlet in which I live, haunted by the ghosts of gristmills and sawmills and grainmills and asheries and distilleries and cattle and sheep and horses that by 1824, even before the coming of the railroads, had driven its human population up to 5,000. Today, its population numbers around 200. It has a post office. I suppose that’s why it’s still on the map.
Freeville also has a physical therapy office, an upscale building supplies store, two café, an ice cream stand and an auto repair garage. No grocery stores though. If you want to eat what you cook, you have to drive to Dryden. Dryden is named for John Dryden, a 17th century English poet and translator of The Aenead. I wanted to say it is the only American village named after a writer, but of course there’s Twain Harte in the central Sierra Nevada that’s named after two plus Homers too numerous to count.
Dryden has a lovely little library that was in possession of a letter written by Abraham Lincoln on the occasion of his second inauguration. (I suppose I could count all those places named “Lincoln” as places named after a writer. I don’t though.) In 2009, the library sold the Lincoln letter at auction for $3.44 million and built an extension – reopening the Ohio quarry, defunct for many years, that had provided the original sandstone and the original architect’s plans.
Next door to the library is a very strange house – or rather a set of outbuildings built around a central residence in that Italianate style with elaborate corbels and a belvedere.
My daily bike ride usually consists of riding to Dryden and back. Yesterday I had to return some library books. As I was putting them in the slot, the woman who lives in the Italianate house smiled at me and waved me over.
“I want to show you what I’ve done with the house!” she announced. “See? I’ve renamed it!”
Copperplate script crawled across the belvedere: Village Reader Inn.
“Is it really an inn?”
“Well, I don’t know yet,” the woman said. “I’ll see what my tenants say.” She was younger than me, rather pretty in a sharp-featured way. “But do you see what I did with the G?”
“Yes,” I said. “You made it into a heart.”
“Not quite a heart,” she said. “It is a symbol. I was hoping you’d recognize it.”
“Uh – I don’t.”
“No? Neither do I. I was hoping you could tell me whether it was Native American or you know, maybe Celtic.”
“Or maybe even Sanskrit,” I said. “Sorry. I can’t.”
“Well, I need to show you this,” she said. And took me by the hand – quite literally – and marched me over to an enormous oak tree dominating one side of the property. There was a hole in the tree’s trunk.
“The moon is waning,” the woman said. “Three quarters full. Bright as silver in the sky. And I was out last night watching the fireflies and I wandered over to this tree – it’s an impressive tree, don’t you think?”
“Yes, indeed,” I said. “It looks like the enchanted tree that the woodcutter’s son refuses to cut down – thus jumpstarting the fairytale.”
“But the way the moon shone on this hole – try to imagine it! Try to see what I saw!”
All I could do really was shake my head. Who was this woman? I am constantly running into people who know me though I don’t know them. Even here in Ithaca –people who knew me in California. They greet me by name, they ask me how I got here, they insist on exchanging phone numbers – I give them mine with one digit off and throw away theirs as soon as possible. If I don’t remember them, I figure there’s got to be a reason. I have a pretty terrible memory if it comes to that – one reason why I’m such an obsessive journal keeper – and at various times in my life, most recently as a storekeeper, have met a lot of people on a superficial basis.
As if reading my mind, the woman froze and smiled anxiously into my eyes. “I do know you, don’t I?”
“Well, you look very familiar!” I said heartily.
“And so do you,” she said. “But if I don’t know you, this must seem very odd.”
“Not as odd as you might think,” I said.
“No. You’re clearly the type of person one wants to discuss the universe’s strange connections with. I’m Evenka by the way.”
“I’m Patrizia.”
“Pa-TREATS-ee-uh! Have dinner with us this weekend, Pa-TREATS-ee-uh!”
“Okay,” I said.
In my story, Evenka has something to do with the missing one-third of a mile.
In real life, the missing one-third of a mile didn’t come up.
Still, the encounter was odd enough.
Freeville is the little hamlet in which I live, haunted by the ghosts of gristmills and sawmills and grainmills and asheries and distilleries and cattle and sheep and horses that by 1824, even before the coming of the railroads, had driven its human population up to 5,000. Today, its population numbers around 200. It has a post office. I suppose that’s why it’s still on the map.
Freeville also has a physical therapy office, an upscale building supplies store, two café, an ice cream stand and an auto repair garage. No grocery stores though. If you want to eat what you cook, you have to drive to Dryden. Dryden is named for John Dryden, a 17th century English poet and translator of The Aenead. I wanted to say it is the only American village named after a writer, but of course there’s Twain Harte in the central Sierra Nevada that’s named after two plus Homers too numerous to count.
Dryden has a lovely little library that was in possession of a letter written by Abraham Lincoln on the occasion of his second inauguration. (I suppose I could count all those places named “Lincoln” as places named after a writer. I don’t though.) In 2009, the library sold the Lincoln letter at auction for $3.44 million and built an extension – reopening the Ohio quarry, defunct for many years, that had provided the original sandstone and the original architect’s plans.
Next door to the library is a very strange house – or rather a set of outbuildings built around a central residence in that Italianate style with elaborate corbels and a belvedere.
My daily bike ride usually consists of riding to Dryden and back. Yesterday I had to return some library books. As I was putting them in the slot, the woman who lives in the Italianate house smiled at me and waved me over.
“I want to show you what I’ve done with the house!” she announced. “See? I’ve renamed it!”
Copperplate script crawled across the belvedere: Village Reader Inn.
“Is it really an inn?”
“Well, I don’t know yet,” the woman said. “I’ll see what my tenants say.” She was younger than me, rather pretty in a sharp-featured way. “But do you see what I did with the G?”
“Yes,” I said. “You made it into a heart.”
“Not quite a heart,” she said. “It is a symbol. I was hoping you’d recognize it.”
“Uh – I don’t.”
“No? Neither do I. I was hoping you could tell me whether it was Native American or you know, maybe Celtic.”
“Or maybe even Sanskrit,” I said. “Sorry. I can’t.”
“Well, I need to show you this,” she said. And took me by the hand – quite literally – and marched me over to an enormous oak tree dominating one side of the property. There was a hole in the tree’s trunk.
“The moon is waning,” the woman said. “Three quarters full. Bright as silver in the sky. And I was out last night watching the fireflies and I wandered over to this tree – it’s an impressive tree, don’t you think?”
“Yes, indeed,” I said. “It looks like the enchanted tree that the woodcutter’s son refuses to cut down – thus jumpstarting the fairytale.”
“But the way the moon shone on this hole – try to imagine it! Try to see what I saw!”
All I could do really was shake my head. Who was this woman? I am constantly running into people who know me though I don’t know them. Even here in Ithaca –people who knew me in California. They greet me by name, they ask me how I got here, they insist on exchanging phone numbers – I give them mine with one digit off and throw away theirs as soon as possible. If I don’t remember them, I figure there’s got to be a reason. I have a pretty terrible memory if it comes to that – one reason why I’m such an obsessive journal keeper – and at various times in my life, most recently as a storekeeper, have met a lot of people on a superficial basis.
As if reading my mind, the woman froze and smiled anxiously into my eyes. “I do know you, don’t I?”
“Well, you look very familiar!” I said heartily.
“And so do you,” she said. “But if I don’t know you, this must seem very odd.”
“Not as odd as you might think,” I said.
“No. You’re clearly the type of person one wants to discuss the universe’s strange connections with. I’m Evenka by the way.”
“I’m Patrizia.”
“Pa-TREATS-ee-uh! Have dinner with us this weekend, Pa-TREATS-ee-uh!”
“Okay,” I said.
In my story, Evenka has something to do with the missing one-third of a mile.
In real life, the missing one-third of a mile didn’t come up.
Still, the encounter was odd enough.
