spencer county

Too Bad Potato Soup Doesn’t Age As Well As Burgundy

Tchad

I was so hungry.

I am in Elliott, IN and wanted to go to our place in Spencer County.  It is right next to where Abraham Lincoln grew up and I have always felt a connection to it.  My Dad says it is because the Spencer County farm is where I was conceived.

In any case, I wanted to go up there and so got a ride.  It is about 45 minutes away on highway 162.  On the way, I bought a bag of ice and a bottle of Port.  One can’t have a nice evening at one’s country place without a nice Port, you know… I did not, however, buy any food because I know that my Dad and his friends hunt deer up there and there is always lots of canned goods.

So I get to the farm after a comedy of errors and realize I didn’t bring the right key.  No problem.  I took the door off the hinges by removing the pins.

Once I get inside I realize that no one has been here for at least 7 years.  SEVEN YEARS.

The inside is a mess of mouse nests and snakes have shed their skins in every tight crevice possible. Also: Raccoons.  Turns out I will have guests with my Port for my country evening.  No problem.

I start clearing away the fire-pit that had been overgrown by Sassafras trees and got my firewood together for the night.  I looked at the cupboard and saw two shelves of canned goods.  Cupboard

Jackpot.

I got a fire going and opened a can of potato soup.  As it plopped into the pan I thought it looked odd.  I chalked it up to the freeze-thaw cycles that have happened over the seasons, but then hesitated and thought it was a good idea that I should look at the expiration dates. Oh, my.  My potato soup had a best if used by date of 2002.

I was so hungry I thought about taking the chance – the nearest grocery or gas station is miles away. But then I thought better of it and started looking through the cans…

I didn’t get a chance to eat much tonight.  All of the food is expired by at least 6 years and the only thing viable in the past five is the coffee.  Instead, I cracked open the Port and went out into the treeline to gather a local wild green: Lambsquarter. I boiled it up and had a couple of cups of it. If you have never eaten it, let me tell you it is quite good – milder than spinach with just the slightest pecan-ish nutty flavor.

As soon as I ate my wild-man dinner I started making really bad decisions.

As it turns out, if you haven’t been on an abandoned farm that has two unmarked and overgrown cisterns, four dilapidated outbuildings, and enough wildlife to stock four counties in more than seven years, you should probably not go wandering around in the dark looking for big dead trees to knock down and burn after having had a little more than half a bottle of Port.  At the very least take a flashlight.

Also: Once you find the cistern that hasn’t been used in 40+ years, best practice is that you should 1. Not try to draw water when drunk and 2. Not drink or use said water before boiling.

Breaking all the rules!

(I am lucky I didn’t 1. fall in and 2. Get Typhoid.)

 

It Is Funny You Mention Demons…

Tchad

After the Fire Demon that got his poor dimensional portal burnt up happened, I thought I would be done with demons for this trip.

Nope.

I was riding with my brother and his wife today.  They had just picked me up from the coal cabin I was staying at and were taking me to Grandma Schlachter’s house to spend the rest of the afternoon before either of them had to go to work. We drove down Hwy 245 past the small house they used to live in on our way.
It is a neat little farmhouse with a garage, outbuildings, and barn.  It is a very sweet little setup.  I liked it.

But then Bobby (that’s my brother) said: “I am so glad we moved.  The old lady was getting to be too much for me.”  I pressed him a little and he told me that they thought the place was haunted.  He said something about being driven crazy by ghosts when my sister-in-law piped up and said “It wasn’t a ghost, it was a DEMON”

Now, let’s do a little setting-of-scene here.  It will help you understand what is going on as we drive through Santa Claus (yes, that is really a town), Indiana.

My sister-in-law wants desperatly to be a good 7th Day Adventist-slash-fundamentalist.  Nevermind the fact that she has a mouth like a sailor, married a muslim in her first marriage, a rabid atheist (that would be my brother) in her second, or can’t distinguish any particular version of the bible.  Forget that she has only the loosest grip on any theology whatsoever. She knows what she wants to be and grasps at straws blindly to get there.  It makes for some interesting (if uncomfortable) family dinners to say the least.

So I look at her and say “Demon?”. “Yeah, a Demon!  Amir (that is her son by her first marriage) said that it would blow in his ear!  And I felt it too!”

Now.  I grew up around a LOT of fundamentalists.  The world was always ending, the end was coming, the coming was at hand, the end is nigh, et-cetera, et-cetera, et-fucking-cetera.  I am used to this kind of talk.

As an adult, I have found that it doesn’t work to directly counter what the person is saying.  What you have to do is engage them without insulting them or discounting the ridiculous thing that JUST CAME OUT OF THEIR MOUTH.

Needless to say, it is a battle.

So she mentions that she both believes in demons and thinks one was haunting her at the place in Spencer county.

Another aside: This is the same sister-in-law who told me that she doesn’t believe in medicine or pharmacology because “You know where we get the word “phamacology” and “pharmacy” don’t you?  We get it from the Latin word for evil magic.* Why would you want to give your children evil magic?”  Did I mention that she is an RN and is going for her PA?  Yeah. That.

So knowing that she had a love of etymology and that it was important to her in making theological decisions,  I thought it would be a good time to say:

“You know where we get the word ‘demon’?  It comes from the Greek word ‘Dæmones!’ (‘ΔΑΙΜΟΝΕΣ’); which were not evil spirits, but rather neutral or positive spirits. In fact, Plato said that at Socrates’ trial he [Socrates] attributed his inspiration to his daemones.” {You, as a reader, can read more about Socrates’ trial here.}

She said: “Well, they must have been wrong or not know what they are talkin about!” She believes that the English language has been around “at least since the Romans”.

I said that it wasn’t until the Christian era we came to understand demons as malevolent or dark.  Well, she wasn’t having any of it.  She looked at me as if I had just said:  “Follow me to the dark side and let me rape your children while you eat the flesh of your mother. ” For. Serious.

And that was where demons in the real sense came into my sabbatical for a second time in as many weeks. Personal demons?  Well, that is a totally different story.  They are an everyday occurrence.

*We really don’t.  Here is the etymology for the word pharmacology/pharma derivatives.  They are Greek in origin. Considering it comes from the period after Christians destroyed nearly ALL of the world’s learning, well, I am surprised that we got this far <insert more rant here>.

And just for fun:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Algol