Thursday, July 17, 2014

Out come the wolves

From [on riker's wolves] by Matthew Kremer:

the costliness of imported cloths
had induced the practice of
making domestic woollens,
and the raising of sheep
for that purpose,

riker describes in one
of the opening segments
of his Annals of Newtown,
a record of the founding
of the settlement that would
centuries later become elmhurst.
the depredations of wolves offered,
however, a serious impediment
to the safe rearing of flocks.
this comedy occurred
in and around
the first few decades
of the dutch settlement,
when the terrain was dominated
by natural elements whose threat
outstripped the reach of man.

i like to walk around the parking lot
of the georgia diner and feel how
it would be to have been prone
to such a fantastic death
in a new, empty land.
the area would have abutted
horse brook, of course, so
it's likely that predators
would be lurking nearby.
now, there's only an
indonesian grocery store
with decent prices on meat
and a stretch of tall weeds
along a chain-link fence
on the southern side
of justice street.
and though the inhabitants
of this town were less annoyed
by these midnight prowlers than
their neighbors of the adjoining towns,
they found it necessary, in february, 1692,
to offer twenty shillings a head
for every wolf killed within
the limits of the town.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's this?

georgetheatheist said...

"What's this"?
____________________________

It's an artsy-fartsy break on the Queens Crap blogsite. Ahhh, so-o-o relaxing - I feel like a new man.

Anonymous said...

Its your blog so you are free to do what you wish, but with the tons of serious stuff going on out their I would leave this to a Sanchez paper or perhaps a QHS newsletter backpage.

Queens Crapper said...

Are you implying that I don't cover everything? Because I take umbrage to that. I've been featuring his poems regularly and all of a sudden it's a problem?

Anonymous said...

Justice Avenue

Anonymous said...

To anon 5: thanks, I've made the correction.

The poems have a Twitter now.

twitter.com/elmhurstpoems

Thanks for reading and to Crapper for linking to them.

Matthew

Anonymous said...

Wolf pits were usually large man dug holes with sharpened upright sticks at the bottom. The holes were camouflaged with boughs and baited with carrion.
When the wolf took the bait it fell into the hole and was impaled by the sticks.
No more wolf.

Gary the Agnostic said...

Thanks for posting the poems, Crapper!!!

Anonymous said...

Sigh. I'm leaving this joint!

Anonymous said...

I used to drink at the Justice Inn back in 67 and it later became Spirits Pub and they had local bands play there.The owner died and it closed.
Rumor was the building had jail cells in the basement. The court house was nearby on Broadway.When we were kids we used to hang out on the steps. I think the court house was closed by then.It's all gone now.

Anonymous said...

Seems fitting that the "Justice Inn" should have jail cells in the basement.

Anonymous said...

My father had the Justice Inn built in the late 40's. There never was a jail in the basement. There was a craw space under the hall section, a large walk in refrigerator for the beer and meats, a locked room for the wine and whiskey, and a large storage area for canned food. I worked in that basement a lot so I can tell for sure there was no jail.