I can't help thinking we're all a little goofy, every last man or woman who can't pass up a museum--or the people who run them. So I wasn't surprised when I met the guy who finally shuffled out of the back. I don't think he was sleeping, but his huge unshaven face had a Rip Van Winkle look, as if he'd just been a century away.
I'd stopped at a little rural museum because it was there, not because I'd intended to. Surprisingly well-kept, it was along the road I'd been traveling. I have trouble passing those things because, even though they're just another kind of cemetery, stories live in those places and I'm always shopping.
Retirees who staff 'em are nearly always a little oddball. Unlike the masses, they find their joy in what once was. This guy wore huge glasses low on his nose, glasses that exaggerated his eyes, giving him an owly look. Just what shape of humanoid will wander out of the back room of most small-town museums is anybody's guess.
He appreciated my stopping by--I may have been the only visitor that morning. He seemed knowledgeable, showed me local maps, talked about buckskin explorers. He was all right with the fact that someone had come in off the street, but he didn't act as if I'd saved him from loneliness or backroom suicidal thoughts. Beefy, tall, he was shaped like a old wood stove. I can't guess where he needed to go to buy belts.
I spent ten minutes with him, told him about the newly discovered Missouri River Trail. About that he was interested, asked questions I couldn't answer. He was a character, just one of a host of rumpled geezers of both genders who likely read far too darn many books.
Fort Sisseton, just down the road, was hosting a festival on Saturday morning, and I figured I'd stop by. As much as I like history, I've never been particularly taken by re-enactors, who dress up like Jedediah Smith or Stonewall Jackson as if the West needs still to be won.
The fort was a long ways off the beaten path, but I like that. Hundreds of people, a thousand maybe, were already there--more on the way. Parking lot attendants on horseback pointed me where to leave the car.
It was still early, but the morning, bright and cool, was joyfully inviting. Some of the fort's buildings were open for inspection. A blacksmith and a carpenter were doing their things, more than willing to show and tell. Hefty women in aprons and long dresses had coffee going on metal stilts just outside floor-less canvas tents. Some were mending things or making soap or throw rugs.
I watched an officer in a Union uniform aboard a big, handsome horse, pull out his sword and slice a pumpkin at full gallop. An old hairy hippy in frilly blouse and leather vest strummed a guitar and sang about doleful wide-open spaces. Children begged daddies to buy wooden swords and rabbit pelts. Gunfire--even cannon fire--shook the whole neighborhood every few minutes. It was something akin to Tulip Festival, with guns. Cost me five bucks, but the whole event was worth my time.
A big open-air tent set up near the entrance had rows of benches all the way across, full of people. On my way back to the car, I shuffled into the front pew. A projector threw a video up on an old-fashioned movie screen spread wide and tall. The image was barely visible in the sunny morning, but the very first face I saw when I sat down was the rumpled docent in the owly glasses back at the little museum. There he was, front and center, talking knowledgeably about dying small towns where, I'm sure, most of the hundreds sitting beneath that open-air tent lived or once had.
Blew me away. I couldn't help but smile. There he was--the expert, the authority being interviewed on an as yet un-aired PBS documentary on the death of small towns, the same guy I couldn't help giggle about once I got back in the car. Good for him, I thought. Good for him. Sounded like he knew very well what he was talking about.
And then yesterday, our pastor chose a passage from John 17, a prayer Jesus offers, asking that the Father bless the world as he himself has been blessed: "I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
And then, our pastor made the outrageous claim that, if he's understanding this passage right, our meeting others, even and maybe especially others we don't know, we'll be meeting Jesus.
I couldn't help remembering the rumpled, unshaven guy who had suddenly appeared on that yet-to-be released video in the open-air tent. I couldn't help but think about what a blessing I'd been given to share a little more than just plain history with the guy in the owly glasses that Saturday morning, a meeting for which, this morning, I'm happily thankful.
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