As he sat, typing at his keyboard, it happened.
He was “drawn” into his story.
Literally.
He’d written a myriad of mush, but this time, there was something different in the otherwise usual free flow of neurons, electrons….digit-hammer against key, electron within circuitry and pixel on screen.
He thought of that paradigm. Of synapses firing, controlling both thought and musculoi-skeletal response…and of the fire in the circuit beneath each key, feeding that “brain” on the other side (maybe yours?)…or perhaps, just a cold and lonely, lovely work of Intel architecture.
But it was in that moment that all was transformed.
Man became keyboard, and computer became man.
There was no interface.
They were one.
Suddenly, he was drawn (in a conscious world) into his own dream-state.
He’d become one with the computer, and the computer one with his dreams, nay, with his fantasies.
No longer was he a man portraying god in his story.
Now, he was the story.
All thoughts converged at this event horizon…all things became one at this “singularity”.
It was not a mind meld (computer’s don’t have minds) – it was a great “coming together”.
Now, he did not just dream of the story unfolding, he became a part of it, as in his dreams; a bystander of sorts, a people-watcher; an over-seer, plugged in.
He was the straw boss of his stories, and the fun was about to begin. Not only would he feel the whip in his hand, but experience its crack and sting as well.
1911
The birth was quite ordinary.
He was the first-born child of Thomas Milton and Myrtle Floyd Wardmon.
There was an electricity in the air at the time. Everyone, everyone, everyone could talk at length about the brilliant, young men and their flying machines.
The Iron horse had the continent connected for years and years…but now, flight would conquer the skies and we would travel farther, faster.
It had only been ten years since the birth of flight at Kitty Hawk, and Tom and Myrtle were both well read, and had a keen sense of the times.
Now granted, Tom’s favorite rag of choice all too often concerned “the ponies”…for he did so love a good game of the “pitch and toss”; but irrespective, they both did read, and Tom read more than just the funnies and the racing papers.
Oh, and he’d play the occasional game of cards and pool as well.
They had family in Cincinnati (“Cinsanatta”, where we come from), and they were not simply of planter’s stock; they were educated, and born of good breed.
And thus when it came to what to call the young lad, it became obvious to them both…Orville.
They knew he would grow in times of scientific change…radical scientific change.
Madame Curie had already performed the experiments which made she and her husband so famous.
Who knew that the two technologies would merge in a fiery, blood-filled time for the young lad.
The hills of Eastern Kentucky were a harsh place then.
There was little work, and young Orville was damned lucky his Pop worked at the railroad.
Had it not been for the Louisville-Nashville line, they’d have starved; in spite of superior intellect; thought, no matter how high-minded, simply doesn’t produce manna.
That took work; back breakin’ work.
He grew up in harsh times, and harsh times made for a harsh streak in an over-all gentle (and gentile) people.
They had a tough edge, these Kentuckians.
“The Dark and Bloody Ground”, he’d later tell his own Grandson.
“This is what the Indians called Kentucky, and is a literal translation of the concept…it is where they fought their wars, lad, where they laid their dead to rest. A killing ground, and a vile, and cruel and harsh place. We never would have made it had the rail not taken Father points South.”
As young Mrytle and Tom had dreamed, the boy grew to be an engineer…a maker of dreams; a reality maker, from concept to existence, from dream, to being.
As a very young lad, he’d play in Grandfather’s shop.
Augustus Wardmon was a blacksmith. He forged metals into steel, and when locals came with a need, he’d bend it from his fiery furnace, and turn their concept into tool.
It was in the blood of the line, this need to create.
To forge reality from nothingness.
To create.
It was in their bloody nature, and was borne from that dark and bloody ground.
By the time he was five, he was already playing in his “papaw’s” shop. While it was the vernacular of the place, Orville was often scolded by Mother and Father alike, for while living in the rough and wild, they were a cultured breed, these Wardmon’s…they came from educated stock.
And so it was with haggard, old Augustus.
His face was like leather from the years of staring into the furnace, of getting the glob of molten metal “just right” so he could forge the iron into the implements required for rail, combustion, propeller and advancing all of man into the great beyond.
Like everyone in the area, Augustus was forged on hard work, and young Orville learned from his Grandfather.
He learned at an early age what it meant to forge a man.
It was not long into his fifth year that young Morrison was born.
Now to hear Orville Floyd tell it, Morrison would be the best of them all.
I suppose it is always that way with the blades cut too early in their youth.
But to hear the brothers tell of young, “banty” Bannister Morrison, it elicited thought in a young man, of boys who’d become men “bigger than life itself”.
Oh the stories…just the look in the eyes of the men evoked such thoughts in a young lad, of a boy who could run farther, leap higher, attain a greatness that great men could only dream.
Not long after Morrison, Emerson was born…and then the girls.
Oh my, what a family.
It was in Wofford that the gamblin finally caught up with ol’ Tom.
Orville had been down to Rockhold to fetch his dad back as his mom was getting lonesome home alone.
Orville was the oldest of the lads, and she sent him alone as she knew young Morrison would get in trouble with those local trollops who freqented the store fronts of “downtown” Rockhold.
Orville just made his way into town when he saw it take place.
Some fella had managed to back his way out of the pool hall. Oh yeah, there were card tables there running poker, girls all around, and of course, craps in the back.
Orville never got an idea of what went on upstairs as his dad would never let him go, but he had an idea it had something to do with the gals, as they were always hanging around on the bannisters upstairs.
But on this occasion, Orville barely made his way to the front door when the man almost knocked him down backing out of the door.
And then, there was that thunderous BOOM.
Young Orville had never heard a .44 like that one. Oh, he’d fired his dad’s .22, and a couple of the shotguns…but never nothin like this.
The man’s chest practically exploded into mid air, and there was blood and guts flying everywhere.
Orville had never seen anybody killed before.
Not long after, the people inside began to scatter, and it was then that he was lifted up off the ground and carried away by his dad.
He couldn’t get his mind off the look on that guy’s face as he lay dying in the street…that gaping mouth, that gurgling lung, gasping for air…air that would be his final few breaths.
It horrified him, and excited him at the same time.
A real, live man…kilt right there, right in the middle of Rockhold.
Damn.
It was a sight.
Wasn’t long after this that Myrtle kicked Tom out.
Grandad always said she was crazy, Granny Wardmon.
What I remember, as a kid, was her sitting there, cussing the television set, as politicians plyed their wares on Sunday’s, right after church.
Mom and Mimi would drop me off at her house, and she’d sit with me until they returned, usually sometime in the evening.
I figured they were shopping…to this day, I’m not really certain what they were up to.
But I was a good boy, like I was supposed to be.
And “Granny” took pretty good care of me.
In the evenings, we’d watch Laurence Welk, and then Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom”. If I was especially good, she’d let me watch The Wonderful World of Walt Disney.
But I’ll never forget the political programs in the afternoons. How angry she would get, and shake her fist at the tube, and spit would fly out of her mouth.
She was pretty passionate about her politics.
Guess that’s where I get it.
But it was right after Orville witnessed this killin, it was then that she kicked Tom out and later divorced him.
Grandaddy (Orville), he went to work for the brick yard.
He’d load bricks onto a hand rail car, and they must have paid him pretty good.
I say this, because when I attended my Uncle Mick’s funeral, my Aunt Betty, one of the younger girls, she told me that if it wasn’t for my Grandad working the brick yards, they’d have all starved.
I remember she saw my Masonic ring, and was proud and told me that it was the Masons who got her daddy off the booze and the gambling and the loose women.
That’s when my Granny decided to take him back.
Orville worked so hard during that time they were apart.
The boss on the brick yards drove him extraordinarily hard (he’d probably lost money to Grandaddy Wardmon).
He drove Orville like a rented mule…a community mule…he drove him down.
There was one day that Orville loaded too many bricks at once (he liked to “best” himself), and when he did, the hand brake on the car broke loose.
Orville had his foot on the rail on tip-toe in order to get the bricks up on the hand car.
Needless to say, the wheels rolled right over his foot.
I remember, he told me on a fishing trip when I asked him about his “funny” foot, that he screamed bloody murder.
The old doc at the railroad brickyard poured kerosene on his foot, and Orville went back to work loading the cars.
He had to feed his family.
Three of his toes fell off a week later.
But he kept working.
They were tough, these Kentuckians.
Tough.
