Lee Russell: Blacksmith with wagon wheel hub and spokes. Depew, Oklahoma (1940)

"Silences must frame meaning."

I earlier characterized history as being like tributaries. Like all metaphors, this one should seem imperfect in practice. Imperfect but also essential, for some visualization appears necessary in order for me to produce an orderly—or orderly-seeming—exposition. I dare not just jump all over the place, a practice I've engaged in when performing oral representations of my histories. Short stories don't demand the quality of continuity insisted upon by broader themes. I've more than once already considered that my mission might have always been impossible, even at the beginning when I felt energizing motivation. Like many endeavors, this one began as a Bright Idea! Bright Ideas! bring their own motivating forces with them and require little goosing. Bright Ideas!, however, seem fundamentally different from projects. They might prove to be the seed of a project but will need to mature into something characterized by other than blind enthusiasm. Coherence insists upon something different and much more complex.

I've been amending my original notions about this history since I started laying down the first story. This might be essentially an evolutionary process, necessary maturation. As my perspective shifts, some aspects become more apparent, and even the fuzzier parts start to find their places in an as-of-yet-defined whole. This morning, the more apt description involves Spokes and hubs. Each spoke requires careful crafting and must be similar but never identical to any other, for each spoke must support its own part and no other. However, they must be so designed to be capable of working together with each other. A delicate balance allows strength as well as resilience.

My mother's family comprises seven primary Spokes: The Jacksons, The Wallaces, The Swift/Currins, The Van Schoiacks, The Sewards, The Kennistons, and The Mayfields. Many side stories add support, but all these stories merge into a single hub: my mother. My dad's Spokes seem materially different since they seem much less ethnically diverse. His family became exiles around eighteen hundred, forced from their homeland by The Terror following The French Revolution. They roamed far East before heading westward. His mother's family had been royalty since long before The Dark Ages. Noteworthy, if not necessarily famous, they might have mostly been retinue, part of that small army of family accompanying all royalty. I suspect I might find some seriously noteworthy forebears in that mix. I know that my great-grandfather on that Spoke turned out to be a circuit rider, a profession rather like a minister without portfolio. Those without congregations or church buildings declared themself circuit riders rather than just hard-core unemployeds.

Coordination seems essential in any collaboration, and I want to formally declare that this material was not produced via solo performance. The Muse possesses access to Ancestry.com, which I do not have, so I rely upon her surfing to flesh out details missing from my other family material. Much more unclassified material exists in steamer trunks currently held hostage by circumstance in my sister's basement, tucked into corners inaccessible without Herculean effort, not even I feel terribly compelled to expend. It remains a mere aspiration that one day, that material might get more formally classified, even digitized. The motivation to complete that work has yet to arise, not even from my desire to successfully complete this project. I said before that history must be the product of all that's left out of the stories. Silences must frame meaning.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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