Bones

by Pa Rock
Cultural Commentator

I grew up in the Ozarks, a rural area of America that was, and is, somewhat unique. One of my best friends in elementary school, for example, had a collection of bones that he would often bring to school. They weren't animal bones, or even fossil bones. They were the skeletal remains of Indians who had died in our county in the previous century. He had a couple of skulls, jawbones, and a few long arm and leg bones. It was fascinating to root through his collection. No one regarded Indian bones as being human bones - carrying around a box of human bones would have been perverse and disgusting!

Twenty years or so ago I began reading the Navajo detective novels of Tony Hillerman. Hillerman passed away last year after authoring a collection several books featuring fictional Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Detective Jim Chee. Although he was an Anglo, Hillerman lived among the Navajo and knew well the people and places of which he wrote. His books are amazing.

The reason that I mention Hillerman, is that the first book of his that I read, I believe it was A Thief of Time, but could be wrong about that, contained a scene regarding the relevance of bones. In that scene an Anglo lady anthropologist was going through a collection of Indian bones at a university and labelling or classifying them. As she worked she came across a box addressed to her that contained more bones. She gave them a cursory examination and then opened the letter that accompanied the box. The letter writer explained calmly that he had been out robbing graves, much like university anthropologists had been doing to his tribe's sacred burial grounds, and the bones in the box were those of the lady's grandparents!

She found those bones to be much more unsettling than the bones of the Indians.

Geronimo, the famed Apache Chief, died one century ago this year at Ft. Sill, OK, where he was being held prisoner by the U.S. Army. He was interred at Ft. Sill and that is where his remains supposedly rest today. Twenty of his descendants filed suit in US Federal Court in Washington, DC, today to free his "remains, funerary objects, and spirit from 100 years of imprisonment at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the Yale University campus at New Haven, Connecticut, and wherever else they may be found." The descendants want to have the remains returned to the western United States, the birthplace of Geronimo, for a "true Apache burial," an important component of the tribe's culture.

So, if the great Chief is buried at Ft. Sill, how did Yale University figure into the court case? That goes to a legend that has been circulating since shortly after Geronimo's death. The once oh-so-secret club for irresponsible frat boys at Yale that goes by the name of Skull and Bones has been rumored to have Geronimo's skull in it's clubhouse - a.k.a. "The Tomb" - with that treasure allegedly having been stolen from Ft. Sill by some young Army officers and Yale alumnae. Prescott Bush, a United States Senator, Nazi enabler, and father of George H.W. Bush, has long been thought to be one of those responsible for the grave robbery.

While most historians consider the Yale story to be so much frat boy horseshit, the club apparently does have some human bones in its club house. In this modern age, a DNA test could verify of vilify the legend.

It is time that the government let Geronimo's remains go free where they may receive a proper Apache burial at the head of the Gila River in New Mexico. It is also time that the spoiled rich kids at Yale abandon their morbid silliness and direct their energies into public service and making the world a better place for one and all.

Rock's Roost

Rock’s Roost is a small piece of heaven in the Missouri Ozarks. It is a cabin, of sorts, sitting among tall pines on a very rocky patch of ground. Right now it is in hibernation mode because the owner, yours truly, suffers from wanderlust. But when Rock’s Roost is awake, it truly rocks!

It has been four years or so since the Roost was functioning as a farm, and even then it barely resembled anything that a real farmer would brag about at the local coffee shop. It was an enterprise that was all expense and no profit (all hat and no cattle), yet I profited considerably from the experience.

When Rock’s Roost was at the pinnacle of its glory it was home to a dozen or so pygmy goats that frolicked on their own playground. The large truck tires and painted barrels that I set up for their amusement, and my own, are still there, though they look somewhat sad without the goats. Little goats must have invented the game “King of the Mountain,” because they would spend hours upon hours knocking each other off of those tires and barrels! The pygmy goats seemed to be always giving birth. Sometimes they did just fine on their own bringing twins or triplets into the world, and at other times I would find myself up to my elbows in pulling goats. One spring day I came home after being gone for the weekend, and there to greet me were seven new baby goats and three very tired nannies!

Five or six domestic rabbits ran free, and several times a year they would bring out their baby bunnies to meet the other creatures that called the Roost home. There were also three pot-bellied pigs whose main goal in life was to find a cool place to sleep in the summer and a warm spot for slumber in the winter. In the winter I would usually get home after dark and have to roam out to the dark barn to feed – where I would invariably trip over a pig or two!

A large contingent of fowl made their nests at Rock’s Roost. A flock of noisy guineas worked the grounds during the day looking for ticks, and at night they would nest in the tree tops ready to sound the alarm whenever anything unexpected happened in the darkness. For awhile there were also peacocks, two males and two females. They would nest in one very tall pine right next to the cabin. Whenever something would set the guineas to squawking, the peacocks would chime in with their distinctive screams. All of the dogs in the neighborhood would then add their howls to the chorus. Nothing went undetected at Rock’s Roost, even on the darkest of nights!

Other feathered residents included a tom turkey, a cranky goose, and two dozen or so hens of mixed varieties that always provided an abundance of eggs - and all of my friends shared in the bounty! There were also a few roosters who liked to make noise and fight. The best birds on the little farm were four large emus. An emu is a three-toed, very large bird, similar to an ostrich only somewhat smaller. My emus loved to be hosed off on hot days in the summer, and they would sit in mud puddles and visit whenever the opportunity presented itself. One of the emus would reach over the fence with his long neck and feast on the cherry tomatoes that dangled close to their enclosure. Another was always underfoot whenever I did any cement work because she considered wet cement to be a delicacy! A large male ostrich also lived at the Roost for awhile, but he was as mean as the emus were sweet, and we soon had a parting of the ways.

But it was the dogs that were the King and Queen of the Roost. Paladin and Paloma, a pair of beautiful Great Pyrenees, ran the place by day and night. Those dogs were so special that they deserve their own post on this blog. It will be coming soon!

If the Roost was a comforting retreat on most days, it was magical during storms. A good spring or summer storm drove everyone together. The creatures of the Roost would gather in the barn, an assembly of friends waiting out the downpour and quietly tolerating the farmer as he fed the group and talked incessantly of things that were of no import to them. Life was beautiful, and everyone in the barn reveled in it. It was the very best of times!