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,..September
19, 2001,..
I
got bored with the interstate today and I went west 5 miles off
the interstate to Fairmount , Indiana . The little town where
James Dean grew up . Its really middle America with corn fields
all around and old houses ,... a few grand ones and then many
more that are just old and a little eccentric and haphazard ,...
There were many flags out,... it really looked like the America
of years a go .
Somehow the Americanness of it all made more poignant by the tragic
events of September 11, 2001 .
James Dean was born Feb. 8 , 1931 ,.. I was 14 when I saw "
Rebel Without A Cause " ,.. I was in Junior High School in
Gadsden , Alabama ,... it was the original days of James Dean
and Elvis .
The people of Fairmount , Indiana were pretty friendly and down
to earth and you could tell there was still more of a hint of
innocence about them than most other Americans.
There are no Mc Donald's or Walmarts in Fairmount .
I went to the old highschool where Dean graduated . Its all run
down with boarded up windows and with many of the upper windows
broken out ,..
by rock throwing kids no doubt .
A lumbering , decaying ghost of yesterday , that , I imagine ,
nobody knows what to do with ,.....
I went to the local museum in an old house where they have mostly
James Dean stuff,...
I talked to a woman there who graduated that old high school with
Dean . She said he was an athletic type though they didn't have
a football team, .. he played basketball and ran track and other
things. She said he hung out with the jocks but that he was very
artistic and at the same time very down to earth .
Talking to her I had the feeling of entering a portal back in
time a ways ,..
to a very different time in fact .
I went to James Dean's grave which is very modest,.. and to a
church he went to called " The Back Creek Friends Church
".
And finally to a farm house where he grew up ,. just down the
road from where he's buried ,..
His only living relative , a cousin, lives there and is a farmer,...
he doesn't care if people drive up to the barns and look around
and take a picture but he doesn't want them coming up to the house
and bothering him or asking questions,..
I saw him in the distance,..
with the cornfields and some horses behind him ,
just a farmer with gray hair,
taking care of his business ,...
I begin to feel that James Byron Dean must have had some kind
of strength and calmness that came from this land and that time
,.. a sort of quite security ,.. from these cornfields on this
good earth .
Earlier in the day I had remembered the mysterious " corn
maiden " I bought from the Indians ,.. one my most prized
"possessions " ,.. its carved from wood and painted
into the form of a veiled spirit figure of Indian culture which
the Indians hold sacred. Its sooooo beautiful !
I thought of Dean appearing to me from the other side,.. somehow
walking out of one of those corn fields ,.. I seemed to have the
knowledge that he carried that strength ,calmness, security from
this land , these cornfields , to the insecurity of the stages
of New York City and to the wild fields of Hollywood moviedom
where his fame soared like a shooting star .
And then,.. he snuffed it all out in a speeding car back down
on earth .
He liked speed .
He was 24 years old.
It was 1955.
I was 13 .
He was gone by the time " Rebel Without A Cause " came
out .
It only added to the mystery .
We saw the photograph of his grave in the magazines.
We were drawn deeper into the mystery of it .
The hard fact of his death was the final straw ,.. we were more
fasinated than ever.
" Rebel Without A Cause " introduced me to the Griffith
Observatory that overlooks Los Angeles. In the movie the teenagers
encounter the vastness of the universe there.
I've been to Griffith Observatory many times since I saw those
images so long ago .
A pretty amazing afternoon .
And so it was,... out on the road ,
I got lost in time for some moments,...
just off the interstate a few miles , deep in the cornfields around
Fairmount, Indiana where I again found a few little things that
make life worth living .
Steve
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