Every
Town Needs a Castle
Part I – By
Dwayne Hunn
A fortress Every town needs a castle.
Towering walls sheltering those inside Not a castle built or
moved by a monied ego,
Keeping intruders out Not a relic to be dusted or curated.
Not a project fashioned from corporate largess.
A moat. Not
subsidized by community block grants
A drawbridge.
A gate through which horses gallop in and out. But maybe one built by those
Whose heads some would say are filled with rocks.
Knights.
Righting injustices or flailing at windmills. Yet often history has hinted
Returning in proud or humorous rest from a foggy, that those with heads as hard as rocks
or was it smoggy, day’s efforts…. have moved the world…
Or at least moved some neighbors, and
certainly
their cousins.
Maybe some of that is the life good castles breathed in days of
yore. The strong arms of its granite walls were there to
hug the huddled peasants and small villagers when danger sneered at them
in their humble homes. The muscled shoulders of its bulging walls were there to
shelter the needy from the harsh realities of the outside world. The castles’ good lords
raised their wine glasses often and had wonderful feasts and flings. They wrote
decrees with common sense and simplicity. They could laugh, sing off key and
weep. To those who passed through their castle walls with warmth and honesty,
the doors remained open. For those who blanketed good castles with the gloom of
their lives or broke a bond of old world integrity, the heavy gates soon
slammed closed.
It wasn’t long before nuclear arms outdated hugging
castle walls. Castles became relics. Museums.
Today benevolent lords live in apartments, houses
and estates, usually trying to raise a couple of okay kids. Curators dust the
relics inside the towering wails that once inhaled and exhaled knights who
righted wrongs or flailed at windmills.
Is this the gospel as it is and should be? Not
necessarily.
Every town’s castle should be built by that spirit
that pulls kids into a patch of woods to slap together a tree fort. It need not
be an elaborate, ornate, fancy, expensive centerpiece. It should be richly
built from old ideas, recycled things scraped together and sparks of creativity
nourished by sweaty work.
I think I know about this need for a castle, not
because I might have been Robin Hood in a previous life, but because I lived in
one
in this life. Now it may be hard for today’s
suburbanites to relate to the need for castles or to stories of its errant,
childlike knights. But please try to bear with me, even if just to assure
yourself that Robin I not be.
Married with Children may be television fare
that most Americans find easier to bear than words and stories of twentieth
century castles. Dungeons and Dragons may be the pastimes that young
folks find more enticing than slapping together tree forts and funky castles in
the remaining orchards of today’s outdoors.
But imagine what would happen if all the American
hours spent watching Married with Children and playing Dungeons and
Dragons were uncorked....The bottled, youthful, dreaming spirits,
now entrapped by “Jawaba the Couch” — unleashed building junky tree houses and
fields of play forts.
Imagine the condition of our national psyche? How
many more hearty laughs and happy smiles among adolescents and adults would
sprout if they built their own brand of renaissance castles rather than
mirrored a pillow on a couch or traipsed down a dungeon on a coffee table in
search of some make-believe dragon?
It ain’t easy to build a castle in every town. The
spirit it takes to build a good castle probably exists in most American
communities. Whether the power structure of each American community has the
sagacity to allow those spirits to build castles, determines whether castles
are built. And castles built by good spirits don’t all look the same. What they
probably have in common more than the face of a castle with its towers,
turrets, gates and moats, is freedom to pursue healthy fantasies.... To ponder
realities while sheltered from the increasingly regulated, bureaucratic
regimented forces of the progressively civilized world outside.
Sometimes these castles come in the form of houses,
perhaps with different gardens, uniquely hand crafted living designs. These
places are inhabited by persons so different and good that people look forward
to gathering there in order to nourish themselves on the tasty morsel of life
the hosts always serve them. Sometimes these places may be farms -organic,
communal or otherwise where a sense of community is fashioned by honesty,
integrity and long hours of work close to the soil. Sometimes they may be store
fronts, community centers or gyms where the good fashioned from those seeking,
learning, or sweating inside, offsets the scars of life out on the outside.
Sometimes they may be non-traditional schools or classrooms where the heartfelt
beliefs of the teachers inside make their lessons much more golden than the publicly
endowed school run so narrowly and uninspiredly in the sick or dangerous
neighborhood outside.
Every community needs these castles. The more such
castles a community has, the more its people will see, understand and do.
Glendora has more than one of these kind of spirited
castles. There was one on Foothill in that big old house with the
giant oak outside and dolls collected on its windows and mantles inside. There
was one near Finkbiner Park with that backyard filled with a desert replicated
garden where kids hitting the drug scene could be listened to and turned on to
more natural highs. And from the shaded valley and orchards, blessed old
timers passed on insights and right-living messages so wise that they had to
have been learned in previous times.
Glendora also has America’s answer to the real
castles of yore -
a real adolescent/adult
built castle. Rubel’s Castle, however, is a bit more rebellious than today’s
tamed European castles of yore.
When Harry Reasoned did his 1974 Reasoner Reports
show titled Castles in the World, he juxtaposed two
European castles alongside his choice for America’s castle - Rubelia. The European curators
lamented that their castles were “expensive” to maintain. The head janitor of
Rubella, however, responded, “No, the castle was cheap to run. When I’m hungry
I skin one of the ‘Pharm’ chickens and pull something from the garden.... Burn
old wood when I’m cold. When the wind blows, windmill works. Turns the
washing machine and washes our old clothes
Nope, ain’t too expensive.”
The European curators pleaded with Harry to mention the location of
their castles so “tourists” would come. Rubelia’s head janitor reminded Harry,
“You won’t say where we are if you put this place on TV? We got enough people
riding by wanting to come in. We gotta keep the gate closed almost all the
time. Can’t pile rocks and railroad ties with all those people comin’ by and botherin’.”
The European curators showed off their old castle
stuff but realized the ease of using their modem conveniences at the end of a
day’s public relations work. When Harry asked how the castle hands got around
all the old stuff, the head janitor replied, “Oh, but they use it all. It all
works.” Yes, from the 90 year old cast iron, gas fired water heater for the
shower to the wood burning stoves to the 10 gallon glass bubble top gas pump
and 13 antique cars and trucks - it all worked.
It is often said that Merlin the Magician, from King
Arthur’s Court, retired because “rationalists” were beginning to rule the
world. What do you think Merlin would say today if he were immersed in the
stories of life that wash over the airwaves of our two shores? Every town
needs whimsy, magic, irreverence and the hard work that lets those wonderful ingredients of life succeed
in standing the rationalist on their head.
Rubelia has lots of the whimsy, magic and
irreverence and the hard work that turns people around or upside down. Some
lose their sense or cents, when stood on their head and seldom come back to
drop more on the floor. Many get a kick out of being stood on their head. Some
of them enjoy continually coming back for more. Some of them depart the castle having
untapped their hidden reservoir of whimsically flavored common sense. They go
away with this time spent to getup from the couch back home and perform their
own little magic show so they too can stand the
rationalists on their heads.
Rubelia has stood a lot of things on its head - the
Harley partially cemented almost upside down in one of its walls; to the tunnel
winding upside down three levels below ground; to Crazy Bill capturing John in
his string trap to hang him upside down in his dungeon bedroom. And yes,
Rubella has stood quite a few upside down from the asylum directors, who after
two days of visiting really believed that Rubella was a walled in “funny farm”
for fairly hapless and harmless inmates, to the. Zio’s Pizza delivery boy who
quit after his first night and first delivery to a spooked ‘Pharm’ guarded by
helmeted soldiers carrying vintage firearms; to the Dating Game chauffeur
who believed yours truly ran an international trading corporation from the Tin
Palace’s Round Table.
The dozen wheelbarrows that lifted rocks two, four
and seven stories high may not be needed for rocks as much anymore. Some day
they could be used to cart around the chronicles of magic, whimsy and
irreverence that happened or were passed within those walls. Mrs.Freisner (see the
glendoran, Nov/Dec. 1991) was one of those who helped create the magic.
There were many others and if space allows, I’d like to tell a tale or two
about them.
Why? Because you can’t understand twentieth century castles or
anything else unless you understand some of the characters who are foolish
enough to make them.