59 lines
3.1 KiB
Plaintext
59 lines
3.1 KiB
Plaintext
HAMMOCKS
|
||
By M.L. Verb
|
||
|
||
I've been wondering lately where all the hammocks have gone. It's odd the
|
||
things one wonders about when one has time on one's hands, as I recently had
|
||
(but don't anymore, so don't ask me to volunteer for something.)
|
||
|
||
I bet I haven't seen a hammock around for 20 years. Except in cartoons.
|
||
Hammocks in cartoons are always used to make some point about laziness. But
|
||
even there they are getting pretty scarce.
|
||
|
||
It's possible, I suppose, that the lack of hammocks nowadays has something to
|
||
do with the physical fitness craze, for surely someone at some time declared
|
||
hammocks bad for the back. Nearly everything has been declared bad for the back
|
||
at one time or another -- including things I've never done and things I never
|
||
intend to give up -- so I'm pretty sure, without actually having the offending
|
||
issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association here to cite, that
|
||
hammocks are among them.
|
||
|
||
But I don't put much stock in the bad-back theory, now that I've raised it.
|
||
For anyone who's ever spent part of a soft summer afternoon in a hammock knows
|
||
that when you finally do agree to vacate it you feel so good and rested that
|
||
even if your back hurt you wouldn't know or admit it.
|
||
|
||
A more plausible answer probably has to do with the demise of trees. You may
|
||
have noticed that when developers build new subdivisions the first things they
|
||
rip up are all the trees. I'm not sure why they do this. Maybe it's because
|
||
without lots of shade trees they can sell bigger air conditioners.
|
||
|
||
Whatever the reason, the demise of the trees in this country almost certainly
|
||
has helped hasten the demise of hammocks. Oh, I suppose you could hang a
|
||
hammock between a couple of TV satellite antenna dishes or between the golden
|
||
arches of the fast food joint down the road, but somehow it just wouldn't look
|
||
right. For hammocks you need trees. And, in my experience, at least two of
|
||
them.
|
||
|
||
And once you raise a generation of children without hammocks it's almost
|
||
impossible to re-establish the practice. It's a little like losing the art of
|
||
hand-tying a bow tie or making candles.
|
||
|
||
I think the last serious hammock I knew about was stretched between two
|
||
monster shade trees in a backyard in Pittsfield, Ill., which is the town you
|
||
have to drive through if you need to get from Louisiana, Mo., to Jacksonville,
|
||
Ill. (Oh, all right, there are other, more circuitous ways to get from
|
||
Louisiana to Jacksonville but only someone being especially contentious would
|
||
even mention it.) That hammock was there the last time I looked, which as I say
|
||
was about 20 years ago.
|
||
|
||
Several weeks ago, when I needed to get from Louisiana to Jacksonville and
|
||
beyond, I drove through Pittsfield. I even stopped for some chicken livers at
|
||
the Cardinal Inn or Redbird Cafe or some such (where, says one of my kids, you
|
||
should order the shrimp, not the livers) and I thought about going to see that
|
||
hammock.
|
||
|
||
But I didn't. I was afraid it wouldn't be there any more. And a fellow is
|
||
always better off if he thinks he knows where -- if he needs one badly enough --
|
||
he can still find a serious hammock.
|
||
|
||
|