Fred and I spent some time in Rotary Park just yesterday – yes, admittedly probably augmenting the weirdness that was there already – and here’s some of what we saw:
The first cat grotto we spied was off in the bushes to the left, just past the south end of Rotary Park. First I saw a cat. He crossed my path (Yes, he was black.) and seemed to be headin' somewhere. I watched him and he led me to this weirdness ...
Then, at another spot, a whole 'nother cat grotto.
And off in the bushes behind that one, a whole AVENUE of cat grottoes ...
When we first saw this thing coming up next, we didn't WHAT in the world it was.
It's hard to get a good photo of it, with its marble tiles laid into the ground. The tiles that you see in a double vertical line are embellished with the first day of each month (for example, "November 1") and a pair of what looked to me like a child's or baby's footprints. The other set of tiles, the ones across the top, were the more difficult ones to photograph, because of their placement in an arc above the double-vertical tiles, and they're more worn. Some are even broken. We did manage to figure out, though, that each of them features an hour (7:00, 8:00, 9:00 ...). That's when Fred figured out that the thing is a solar clock, the idea being that one can stand on, say, "November 1" (Coincidentally, we were there on, guess what? November 1!), and your shadow will point to the time of day. Fred demonstrates:
Lo and behold, it worked! Fred's shadow pointed to 2:00, and indeed the time was just about two o'clock!
Fred laughed at me because when we were trying to figure out what the thing was, I had mused, "Does it have anything to do with dead babies?" Now, if y'all look at all my photos here, you'll figure out why I thought that. Yes, you will. Reason: We had just passed the Homicide Memorial (coming up later in this post) and the "Dead Baby Sculpture" pictured here:
The towel was a "remaindering." I didn't touch it.Here's the label for that sculpture:
Once, several years ago, I got myself entangled in a controversy concerning this very building, Bulldog Bait and Tackle. The deal was this: Somebody in a position of power in Columbus Consolidated Government got the bright idea that Bulldog Bait and Tackle needed to be gentrified -- "cleaned up," as it were, in fact, torn down and re-built to "coordinate" with the nearby Civil War Naval Museum, which is all brick and spiffy. Well, this didn't set well with me. It didn't set well with other thinking folks, either. I mean, who in the world ever heard of a gentrified, cleaned up, spiffy BAIT SHOP, for god's sake? You might begin at this point to wonder, Well, what did Bulldog Bait and Tackle in fact look like at this time? Answer: It looked like a bait and tackle shop SHOULD look; it looked like a dump. It was comprised mainly of a piece of a trailer/mobile home or two, and it had all sorts of appendages, and it had a worm dispensing machine on the front porch, and it had a BIG bulldog painted on the street side of the main structure. Bulldog Bait and Tackle was a thing of beauty. And Mayor Bobby Peters and several others there in the courthouse failed to recognize this beauty and wanted to destroy this prime example of vernacular architecture, this gem of local culture. So we went toe to toe, me 'n them folks downtown. I still have, somewhere, copies of that correspondence. Others got involved in the fray, too. Right about now you might be wondering, Did Cathy not realize that in the larger context -- in consideration of the vast myriad of challenges and issues that we Columbusites, that we humans on this earth face -- on a daily basis -- feeding the hungry and achieving world peace to name two -- Did Cathy not realize that preserving Bulldog Bait and Tackle probably didn't measure up as an issue one should put a whole lot of energy and time into? Answer: Yes, I guess I did. But at a certain point in time the cause just overtook me, and I couldn't stop myself. And besides, Bobby Peters and his unfunny, wannabe smartass self got on my last nerve. So I stuck with it. We eventually compromised, Bobby and I. The city agreed not to build a brick shithouse -- uh, that would be bait shop -- but rather to build it out of wood, with a porch, something that sort of better faked "vernacular" than a brick monolith would. So that's what we have now -- Columbus Consolidated Government's fake vernacular version of a bait shop. However, I am proud to point out that the good ol' folks at Bulldog have, over the few years that the "revised version" has been in place, done all they can to return the place to its former beauty, to funk the place back up, as it were, so to speak. So yeah! Y'all go, BULLDOG! Long live Bulldog Bait and Tackle!
Above: An indication that Columbus is now safe from invading Yankee forces.
The Homicide Memorial is not funny. Erected by the parents of a young woman who was a number of years ago the victim of a homicide here in Columbus, the memorial is comprised of bricks into which have been etched the names of that young woman as well as other Columbus homicide victims. The dates of the homicides are there, too. As I look at the bricks, I can remember many of the stories and the names, but some of them are complete mysteries to me. The whole thing is sobering. Fred keeps wondering if any of the victims' families, who surely must have paid to have their loved ones' names put there, get any solace from coming here and sitting on the benches to look at the Homicide Memorial. I hope so. I failed to get a photo of the benches -- will do that next time I'm there.
I think I'll finish up today's post with a shot of a maybe "not so weird" scene at Rotary Park:
Love it all, except that you gave my brain too much "wondering" to do...
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