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In every way, Inconspicuous as professor Gellette Burgess
tried to become, he could not escape the one exasperating
moment that haunted him the rest of his illustrious but
short lived conservative career as a professor of
topographical drawing at U.C. Berkeley. He had entered his
position in the late eighteen hundreds, an unlikely
candidate for immortalization of a humorous poetic rambling.
His position had been hard fought and hard won from his
rural beginnings in Massachusetts, a post that he prized and
honored with devotion and constancy to task.
But this was not enough for his peers who had on many
occasion chided him as being too "full of himself', too
stoic and lacked a sense of humor. "Common get the ice
out of your drawers" they'd say.
He ignored their taunts and their attempts at pushing him to
the edge of an acceptance of a varied lightheartedness,
until they gathered in his office one afternoon to finally
throw down the gauntlet and challenge him to being funny,
the question arose, could he meet the occasion? Mildly he
accepted the request if for nothing else to politely ask
them to take leave of his office and return to the solace of
his studies. Nothing more was mentioned until the day had
arrived when all gathered in his office for the rendering of
his humor to satisfy their adamant focus. He pretended to
rummage through his papers and confessed that he could not
find his writing, to the dissatisfaction of these cohorts
who suggested that he write what he remembered of what he
put to paper. In desperation to release him from this
pressured arrival, he sat for a moment and with pen in hand
began to write:
"I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I I'd rather see than be one."
can tell you, anyhow,
Little did he know then that one chance afternoon in what he
wrote petulantly to release the demands of the spot light,
would in fact allow him to hear again and again the musing
of his dismissal of bothersome fellow educators and bring
him an unexpected immortality of creative poetic vent.
The quatrain began appearing everywhere, anywhere, and with
each find Professor Burgess became infuriated at its
popularity. It neither suited his New England sensibilities,
nor did it render any satisfaction for its reputation. A
decision had to be made to regain his once sedate and
comfortable invisibility.
He published
another that followed:
"Ah, yes!
I wrote the
"purple cow",
I'm sorry,
now, I wrote it!
But I can tell
you anyhow,
I'll kill you if you quote it."
Hoping this would muffle any further beleaguered notice,
people instead thronged and clung to the newest, and begged
for more. It was spoken on all the lips, waited for by
hungry eyes, and he found to his dismay that heads nodded
and hands waved, there was even a small verbal moo that
accompanied their recognition in his direction where ever he
occasioned to travel in the Bay Area and among his students.
If it was that this one chance display brought the opening
to a door of astonished rebellion, Burgess actually found
deep within him a penchant for defiant courage and in one
evening's demonstration, bravely toppled a statue on the
campus he at last declared an eyesore, all the while
laughing uproariously. His fellow professors suddenly turned
from him and indeed did dispel any notion they had any basis
lodged in their challenge that they were responsible for his
actions. The administration also did not look on this avenue
of his funny side favorably or with any accompanying
hilarity in the same vein it had been given, and he was
summarily dismissed.
Burgess finally decided to give in to the will of his
waiting people and began to write humorous poetry, based on
the sudden break of ideas, as he had with his quatrain, a
substitution of the unexpected for the commonplace. He wrote
voraciously about; Bad Mannered Children, Why Men Hate Women
and Look Eleven Years Younger, and many others that flooded
in pamphlet form, as an advertisement, and a book jacket. He
then tried his hand at being the founding publisher of a
humorous magazine called "Lark", which found a
large local population of readers.
So consumed was he in his new found status in the release of
the absurdity that over took his new found literary life in
making people smile and laugh with his divergent poetry, he
as well began to supply word additions to his list of our
English language by using the now familiar and accepted;
blurb, goop and slang in his works.
In the end when his life had taken its twists and turns and
he had followed the road his way, and he had played out the
part of the unsuspecting humorist and poet, he turned once
again to that solid and enduring North Eastern beginnings,
donating his time, his money and his energies to establish
the foundations of small gathering places, wherein boys
could meet under the banner of "The Boys Club of
America".
So I say to you, if it is that we as the creative women we
are, are presented with a creative prod in this weekly
challenge of 'theme', given to us to carry to fruition, and
are willing to allow a transformation of thought and
imaginative resourcefulness in our Wednesday offerings
between all of us here to read, Then I must caution you that
it may not only be habit forming, but contain a vital life
revising as well, which we are all indeed responsible for.
Therefore;
When in doubt as what to be Let your words flow fierce and
free Don't hem in the vital you Give up to it Before it
gives up on you."
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