What follows has been edited for content and relevance to the ongoing investigation
into events in Sugar Creek, Ohio on the night of September 26-27, 2015.
into events in Sugar Creek, Ohio on the night of September 26-27, 2015.
September 13, 2013
Found this journal under a pile of old school papers in the office. Part of me vaguely recalls burying it there sometime in mid-July. Wouldv'e driven a stake through its heart if it had been an option. I'm rereading some of the crap I wrote on my worst days this summer, and there were some bad ones where I nearly went mad staring at the walls: "Ate a sandwich. Sat on the porch for an hour. Went back inside. Couldn't take the silence. There don't seem to be any birds around. Think I'll go back to sleep." Jesus. Lucky thing I don't own a gun.
BUT! My reversal of fortune has gone through its own reversal recently. I actually found a job (of sorts): adjunct teaching at the community college one town over. I swore to myself once upon a time that I would never re-enter that hell, but this summer taught me some provinces of Perdition are more pleasant than others. Gives me an idea for my first course: "Unemployment and Porch Sitting: Dante's Hidden Tenth Circle."
Rachel's also done well for herself, securing a writing job for the town newsletter. (I still remember a time when the Sugar Creek News was almost a newspaper in its own right, although its hard to believe a town this small could ever support it.) She also does online test-scoring part-time for extra money, and between the two of us, we're doing all right. Randi just started her first semester at OSU, pursuing a double major in English and History. (I swear, I tried to warn her. I just hope that academia is kinder to her than it was to me.) She's also insisting that we start calling her "Miranda" now, and throws a fit whenever we slip up. It'll take some getting used to, I admit.
Oh, and then there's this:
Found this journal under a pile of old school papers in the office. Part of me vaguely recalls burying it there sometime in mid-July. Wouldv'e driven a stake through its heart if it had been an option. I'm rereading some of the crap I wrote on my worst days this summer, and there were some bad ones where I nearly went mad staring at the walls: "Ate a sandwich. Sat on the porch for an hour. Went back inside. Couldn't take the silence. There don't seem to be any birds around. Think I'll go back to sleep." Jesus. Lucky thing I don't own a gun.
BUT! My reversal of fortune has gone through its own reversal recently. I actually found a job (of sorts): adjunct teaching at the community college one town over. I swore to myself once upon a time that I would never re-enter that hell, but this summer taught me some provinces of Perdition are more pleasant than others. Gives me an idea for my first course: "Unemployment and Porch Sitting: Dante's Hidden Tenth Circle."
Rachel's also done well for herself, securing a writing job for the town newsletter. (I still remember a time when the Sugar Creek News was almost a newspaper in its own right, although its hard to believe a town this small could ever support it.) She also does online test-scoring part-time for extra money, and between the two of us, we're doing all right. Randi just started her first semester at OSU, pursuing a double major in English and History. (I swear, I tried to warn her. I just hope that academia is kinder to her than it was to me.) She's also insisting that we start calling her "Miranda" now, and throws a fit whenever we slip up. It'll take some getting used to, I admit.
Oh, and then there's this:
 |  |
I found this toward the end of July, when desperation drove me off the porch and out for a walk along the creek. Not to overstate it, but this may have been the thing that brought me back. I saw the lock sticking up out of the rusty muck of the creek bed like a hitchhiker's thumb, and it stopped me dead in my tracks. A little digging and I found the rest. I'm sad to say it was intact when I pulled it out, but quickly disintegrated into its component parts.
For the uninitiated, I'll just say it: this is the lock and trigger mechanism for a flintlock pistol, easily two centuries old if not more. It woke my mind right the f___ up, and got the historian in me salivating. It also lodged a thought in my head that, weeks later, I still can't get rid of.
The Legend.
Could this be proof?
OK, I know I'm an idiot for even writing this. I've been ripping the townies for years for believing in this bastardized Washington Irving crap. Let's look at the facts: in two centuries, nothing has ever been found to corroborate it. Not one brass button, not one arrowhead, and not for lack of trying either. Back in the early '90s, around the bicentennial of the Legend, there was a small flurry of morons combing the creek with metal detectors. We were told it drove our nearest neighbor Bill Pryor apes__t, all these people swarming "his land." (He's claimed for years that his property extends deep into the woods, and gets pretty belligerent about it. He's a bit of a prick.) He made such a stink about it that he actually got the Town Council to ban metal detecting in Sugar Creek. The craze died out soon anyway, as all it produced was piles of rusty beer cans from the '70s. If anything was going to come to light, it would've been then.
But would it, though? Lots of big historical discoveries have happened by accident. The Lascaux cave paintings were found by a bunch of kids chasing their dog. Herculaneum was found by a farmer digging a well. The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Terracotta Army in China, the Rosetta Stone, the god_____ed Venus de Milo, for Christ's sake. Why it is it so unlikely that I didn't just stumble across the thing that everyone else tried but failed to find?
I've been sitting on this for a month and a half now. Why? There's no question that this is an artifact. Even if it's not proof of the Legend, it's still something. What could it hurt to check it out? What pride do I have left to bruise, anyway?
I realize in rereading this thing that I still owe a drawing of the creek from back in June:
For the uninitiated, I'll just say it: this is the lock and trigger mechanism for a flintlock pistol, easily two centuries old if not more. It woke my mind right the f___ up, and got the historian in me salivating. It also lodged a thought in my head that, weeks later, I still can't get rid of.
The Legend.
Could this be proof?
OK, I know I'm an idiot for even writing this. I've been ripping the townies for years for believing in this bastardized Washington Irving crap. Let's look at the facts: in two centuries, nothing has ever been found to corroborate it. Not one brass button, not one arrowhead, and not for lack of trying either. Back in the early '90s, around the bicentennial of the Legend, there was a small flurry of morons combing the creek with metal detectors. We were told it drove our nearest neighbor Bill Pryor apes__t, all these people swarming "his land." (He's claimed for years that his property extends deep into the woods, and gets pretty belligerent about it. He's a bit of a prick.) He made such a stink about it that he actually got the Town Council to ban metal detecting in Sugar Creek. The craze died out soon anyway, as all it produced was piles of rusty beer cans from the '70s. If anything was going to come to light, it would've been then.
But would it, though? Lots of big historical discoveries have happened by accident. The Lascaux cave paintings were found by a bunch of kids chasing their dog. Herculaneum was found by a farmer digging a well. The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Terracotta Army in China, the Rosetta Stone, the god_____ed Venus de Milo, for Christ's sake. Why it is it so unlikely that I didn't just stumble across the thing that everyone else tried but failed to find?
I've been sitting on this for a month and a half now. Why? There's no question that this is an artifact. Even if it's not proof of the Legend, it's still something. What could it hurt to check it out? What pride do I have left to bruise, anyway?
I realize in rereading this thing that I still owe a drawing of the creek from back in June:
In West Virginia years back, I saw a stream that had been corrupted by acid mine drainage. It looked a little bit like this, turned a bright vermilion by mineral pollution. There are no mines near Sugar Creek though, and never have been. And the texture...the sheer viscosity of the water is just impossible to explain. Every theory put forth to explain it - soil content, freak algae growth, bacterial infestation - none of it has held up. The Legend neatly fills the hole that science can't, and doesn't look like it will be dislodged anytime soon.
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