Amelia Gray: Museum of the Weird

June smiled at the poor squirrel, wondering about where the rest of it was at that moment. That was funny because she usually saved ridiculous thoughts about the afterlife for animals or people close to her. When the kitten died, for example, June invented the idea that the pitiful creature would return to the world as a ballerina.

She twisted her hair around her finger and watched the squirrel, which had passed. Her knuckle, wound tight with hair, was nearly at her scalp, and her hand was held against her head by her own hair. June wondered if it would be a comfort. She could barely see her own reflection in the windowpane, and when she squinted, it appeared that the squirrel was sitting on her shoulder. June closed her eyes and pulled her hand away in a ripping clump, making a sound like an animal might make. A brown leaf blew against the squirrel, against its face, and then whipped past. June twisted the hair into a knot and swallowed it without chewing.

She was distinctly aware of her body and skin. The squirrel pitched forward with the swaying tree branch. The times, they were changing.

Harry Austin Clapp, creator of “Thoughts,” a column that ran in this newspaper every week for a score or more years, died at the age of 79, at his home in Collegeport, Saturday, December 25th at 10 o’clock following an illness of several months. Traveller, explorer, engineer, writer, philosopher, real estate man, Harry Austin Clapp rounded out a full and complete life before he passed quietly away.

The Daily Tribune (Bay City, Matagorda County, Texas)

December 27, 1937

Recent rain great for crops and makes the figs glisten and show green.

The people of the town have never seen such a warm rain. Fat raindrops make the figs glow, showing the people of the town a new color of green that they’ve never known before, a green which they call Fig. The townspeople say that this rain is the beginning of things. That year, five families name their first-born sons Fig.

Oscar Chapin growing a ninety-pound watermelon.

Or is the watermelon growing Oscar Chapin? The neighbors begin to wonder. He sits all day by the watermelon, on the ground next to the watermelon in its wooden crate lined with old rags. He takes an eyedropper of water every ten minutes to strategic areas of the ground, under which he says he can feel the root growing. Oscar Chapin claims this watermelon has given him new eyes.

Train crew go to Kingsville with the engine.

Everyone makes a big fuss about it and rightly so, as it takes twenty strong men to lift the train diesel engine into the auto that will transport it to Kingsville. They also travel by train, which makes some of the townspeople think philosophical thoughts about building a train so strong that no train can transport its engine. Likely a train of this nature would need to be constructed in Galveston.

Jim Hale better train his dog.

That dog runs the perimeter of Hale’s yard, treading the ground until he makes a ditch. Dog says, “Hey, come over here.” When you do, that damn dog gives you a recipe for lemon bars which omits egg yolks and disappoints you sincerely.

Found a dirty face powder puff in my mailbox.

If I were a younger man, I would suspect intrigue from the daughters of the farmer next door. Surely they would have left it as a token from their girl-friend, who felt tender emotions for me. As a younger man, I would contemplate this while holding the dirty face powder puff under my nose and breathing in a heaven’s scent of woman’s skin. As an old man, I suspect a group of rowdy boys.

Seth Corse suffering from “tizit” in the back.

What happens is this: we tell the young boy, Seth Corse, he has a beetle on his back. The boy turns round and round and says “tizit, tizit?” All in attendance laugh mightily. This is a game we play on Thursdays.

The Come-Inn afloat with water Saturday.

Nothing but trouble for landlord Gus Franzen. Buckets and extra towels were loaned across the land to ease cleanup for the waterlocked sops at the Come-Inn. The building lifted clean off the foundation as if someone cut the concrete with a blade. When Franzen flung open the door in the morning he was greeted by a boy named Fig who was floating on a dinner table.

Freshly graded roads impassable.

Even when you don’t walk the full length of a freshly graded road, you must stand at the edge of the work and smell the tar and earth. Half of the crew sickened themselves with drink in Kingsville and did not arrive home in time to operate the static roller, which means the road itself is rough enough to cut the soles of your feet through your shoes if you’re foolish enough to walk over it. Passing traffic will compact the road into grooves like a pack of running dogs. I must take a shortcut through the neighbor’s pasture.

School board holding a meeting and electing teachers for the next year.

Women are intoxicating and cruel.

Emmitt Chiles is now a member of the ancient order of grandfathers. Came Saturday, and a nine pound boy.

Brought the new family a pan of lemon bars. They observed the strange color and texture of the custard filling and told me Thank you Harry, would you like to see the baby? Humiliation radiated from all in the room. Even the baby felt its first wave of humiliation, spreading across his face like the fever that would eventually claim him. That damn dog.

Worms feedin’ on the cotton crop. Time to use a wormacide.

On the back of the wormacide bottle there is one warning: Do not plunge your hands into the dark earth and hold them still until nature renews its movement and you feel the delicate pulse of thousands of worms through your fingertips and across your palms. Such a feeling will make it very difficult to use this wormacide.

By parcel post — twenty-five Jersey Black Giant chicks from Ohio. Arrived one hundred percent.

Open the manila envelope and the chicks come tumbling out, covered in their own excrement and feeling betrayed but alive, cry to the heavens, alive after a long and difficult journey, the world around them tinged with gold. They are granted five hours of freedom before they are locked in the coop out back.

The sun is trying in vain to peep between the heavy clouds.

One understands the feeling, thinking back with some shame to a dress heavy like soaking wet lead, like a velvet bag full of bullets. Everything you touch turns to fire.

Frogs croaking.

Turn them over and tickle them, the young boys say to the girls. After much conversing and screeching, one brave girl picks up a slick frog, green as a fig. She flips it over so delicately in her small palm that the boys stop their shoving and feel strange for watching. The girl extends one slender finger and runs it slowly up and down the frog’s exposed belly. When the frog urinates on her, she looks at the boys with loathing. She will later go on to swallow two goldfish alive.

A goose on the slough ranch sounds its rasping call.

The ugliest image in the area. People come from far afield to observe it and feel better about their own lives. On this morning I see a man leaning on his auto, smoking a cigarette and observing the slough ranch goose. The man flicks his cigarette into the wet ditch and drives on.

The something that makes an onion grow; an auto run; a man move and act; a bird sing — where is it generated? Anyone answer?

In the smallest chamber of the heart: Desire.

The mourning dove made her nest in the low tide ground. Foolish bird. Your eggs are now covered with water. The oriole’s nest swinging high in a tree is safe and dry.