Friday, August 6, 2010

THORNBERRIES AND GREERS IN D.C.--Part III


Tuesday, May 13, 2008—Sunny Day for a Geeky Weeky

To everyone's relief, the day was as bright and sunny as the previous day wasn’t. Also unlike yesterday, the Greers were brisk, efficient and out the door much earlier.

Robert Revels, Leda Languishes at their Museum

Jennifer and I discovered in July 1999 that the Air and Space Museum is a giant toy chest for little boys. From the first minute one walks into the main lobby, they are confronted by huge rockets, moon landers, splashdown capsules from the early days of the space program and lots of airplanes. The toy chest effect hadn’t changed. And still carrying his “little boy” within, Robert swiftly fell into a well of the imagination, becoming for several hours, a WWI flying ace, an Italian fighter pilot, an American belly gun operator, and so on. He looped his crafts through the blue sky of the mind, complete with amorphous clouds, while he scoped out and riddled enemies from dozens of nations with his stream of bullets!

He read about planes.

He thought about planes.

He talked about planes.

He read about planes a little more.

Leda slowly decomposed.

As Robert spoke enthusiastically of what he read, she started hearing that sound the adults make in Charlie Brown cartoons: "Waa-waa-wa-wa-waa."

One of the billions of shots Leda captured during Robert's childlike glee.

Before her right arm rotted and fell off onto the floor in a desiccated, fly-ridden pile, she managed to first occupy herself by taking billions of pictures of the various airplanes mounted from the ceiling.

Ultimately, she had in-close pictures of the wings, the insignia, the thrusters, the ashtrays and some saltine cracker crumbs underneath the seats. She was quite happy to receive the timely phone call from the Travelin’ Thornberries, who by this time, were sitting outside the Library of Congress.


Click to follow the Thornberries

Click for Part IV


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