OK Enough Part 2
Thanks for taking to the time to read the first two parts of my "Cold Turkey Tract." Although I'm continuing to work on it, I doubt any more of it will appear here, as I got a complaint. And one that counts.
Perhaps instead you will enjoy
A Recurring Dream
This is a recurring dream I have had many times over a period of twenty years or more. Sometime the background changes but the essentials remain the same. Everytime I have this dream it is so real I figure that some time in my life I must've really experienced something like this I can't fully remember, or perhaps it will happen someday...
My friend Tim and I are in Chicago, and it's wintertime - late in the year and also late in the day. He says you wanna go see Harlin? I say sure - we're right near there -
We are walking up the factory block which runs along Harlin - a huge, grey old factory building, thick with soot, darkness and cobwebs, which is built into the side of a very steep hill. We are walking up the right side of the building, and I can clearly see the tiny, single smokestack which is constantly smoking; not from industrial use but a small, pot-bellied or coal burning stove. In front of it is an old soot covered sign that reads "Harlin" or "Harbin."
Tim says you want to take the steps? There are two entrances; one halfway up the right side which leads straight to the central platform, or a tiny door at the top which leads down a long staircase to the same spot. I say Let's take the staircase...
We step through the old door into the staircase. You should watch yourself going down this long flight of stairs - some are missing, and the missing ones have been replaced with shorter steps in some spots only a couple of inches long. It is almost totally dark going down.
Then you arrive at the main platform, which is still dark but bathed in an eerie orange-violet light, and you cannot tell where the light is coming from. There is a train track set down in a low depression running through the platform, and a vast expanse of impenetrability to the right - perhaps some huge old coal bin, but you really can't see what's back there. Nor can you really see what's at the dark end of the platform, but at the other end are the double doors we would've gone through had we not decided to take the stairs.
The ceiling in this room is immense, but you can't really see how far up it is because it's so dark. You step across a rusty little wrought iron bridge over the train tracks - which are small-gague; must've been intended for coal cars, onto the main platform, which has slots for timecards, an old punchclock which hasn't been used in years, and a small lectern scattered with crudely mimeographed tracts, not much larger than filing cards.
We step to the center of the platform and wait silently. Before long we hear footsteps coming down a creaky staircase parallel to the ones we just came down which, presumably lead up to where the stove is located.An absolutely ancient black man in a rumpled suit, with piercing eyes and standing well taller than either of us walks directly up to us. He begins to speak.
His voice sounds like a busted old washing machine - you can hear syllables and movement in the voice, but it the voice is all scratchy breathing and you can't make out a word he says. But somehow you know he's preaching the Gospel. You want to stop him and ask to repeat himself so you can understand, but you don't dare.
He strikes a bell on the lectern, and reaches into his breast pocket to produce a tiny prayer book with terribly dog-eared pages. He lights an old oil lamp on the lectern, and turns the pages carefully and deliberately, licking his thumb with each turn. Reaching the passage he is looking for, he reads. You still can't understand a word of it, but you listen to every wheezing sound he makes.
He extinguishes the lamp and returns the book to his breast pocket. He stares straight at us with his piercing gaze and offers a short of benediction. When this is concluded, he offers us each a tract. This too is done with deliberation. He takes a sheaf of tracts from the lectern, and removes the top one with a flick of the wrist, and it dangles towards you bent over between his thumb and index finger. You thank him, take the tract, take a look at what it says, look back up in an instant, and he's gone. Vanished. You do not even hear his footsteps depart.
Even though none of his words could be understood, you feel very strongly that something very deep, spiritual and mysterious has just happened to you.
Although you see the dark end of the platform behind you, and the double doors leading outside opposite, for some reason you feel you can only exit through one door, which is directly to your right. Passing through it, you enter into the modernized lobby of a bank building. In fact, this lobby looks exactly like the lobby on the Vine Street side of the Central Trust Bank Building in Cincinnati, if you've ever been there. The bank has just closed, and tellers are leaving. Tim quips to me Don't bother to ask the bank people anything about Harlin. I can't resist, and I say to them Hey! What happened to the old man? You know - the preacher. Where did he go?
They stare angrily at me and don't say a word. I try to re-enter through the door which I had just come through, but I can't - it is locked.
Uncle Dave Lewis
uncledavelewis@hotmail.com