It doesn’t take much to make an eleven year old boy happy. A water tunnel beneath a suburban neighborhood will do just fine. We didn’t have any such tunnels in my neighborhood, but my cousin Mike had one not too far from his house. Mike told me about it and I immediately wanted to explore it. But my mother was somewhat protective. So my Uncle Joe (Mike’s father, my mother’s brother) volunteered to take me, Mike and my brother for a walk through the subterranean wonders of Varmint Brook one weekend (name changed so that I won’t be accused of suggesting unsafe activities for local youth). Uncle Joe was just that kind of guy.

Well, Uncle Joe made good on his word. I recall having a great time walking along the tilted concrete floodway with a flashlight guiding us through the dank underworld. The tunnel went on for about a mile, from whence Varmint Brook proceeded through an uncovered causeway for another mile. Then there was another tunnel, and finally the Brook found its way into a river. Mike told me that the second tunnel was pretty messy. But the first tunnel was relatively walkable, and provided all the adventure that an eleven-year old boy needed for a Sunday afternoon.

Obviously, the exploration of such tunnels is strictly prohibited in today’s world. And obviously, some kids still do it. I recently visited the entrance of good old Varmint Brook, so here’s what it looks like today. I certainly wouldn’t encourage any kids to do what we once did, unless you’ve got a really good uncle or father willing to go along. Unfortunately, such really good, down-to-earth uncles and fathers are getting quite rare in this day and age. And that’s a real loss.

Right around Memorial Day, I got to thinking about my college days. I was still living with my mother and father and brother in the same house that I grew up in; we couldn’t afford to go away to college. During the summers I had a job with the local railroad, and much of it was on the night shift. Which I sort of enjoyed, actually.

Anyway, when I got home after working nights, I would often notice the morning glories that my mother had planted along an old swing set. The vines climbed up along some strings that my mother had strung from the swing frame. If it was a sunny morning, the purple and blue and white flowers would be in full bloom. I always gave them a look as I dragged myself from the car into the house, carrying my utility bag, ready to get some sleep.

Well, back here in 2008, I got an inspiration from that memory: why not grow some morning glories out in my landlord’s back yard? He wouldn’t care; he might even like to see them himself. So I shleped over to the local hardware store and bought two Burpee seed packages. Then I found a spot near the back fence that seemed fairly sunny, and did some planting and watering. It was a bit late in the planting season, but there was still all of June, July and August to come, so I figured it was worth a try.

Eventually some vines started growing and I found some wood stakes in the backyard for them to wrap around. But it took several tries. Just as the seedlings were starting to come up on the first try, the people next door did some work on the fence, and the workers stomped out most of the young shoots. So I tried again, with similar results as they came back and put a new fence in. Well, I had just enough seeds left for a third attempt. OK, this time it worked. Or it seemed to work.

As July progressed, the vines made good progress moving up the wooden stakes. If it didn’t rain for a few days I would go outside with a plastic bottle to provide some moisture. Eventually, the 5 or 6 surviving vines sent out all kinds of side shoots and leaves that started wrapping together, which is part of the knotty charm of morning glories. However, as we entered August last week, I started to look for flowers. Unfortunately, there aren’t any signs of that.

As you can see in the picture below, there are plenty of leaves and vines, but no flowers. Without flowers, there won’t be any new seeds falling to the ground to continue the effort next spring. It seems that the plant doesn’t get enough morning sun; because of the trees and the northeastern start of the sun’s daily arc across the summer sky, my morning glories don’t get any sun until around noon. So I guess they just can’t find the genetic inspiration to put out any flowers. Instead, they put out lots of offshoots, searching in vain for an angle that will catch the dawn’s early light. It was a good try, but it turned out to be the wrong place for morning glories.

It’s too bad that many human lives go that way. You can’t help but admire the people who really makes it in the world; they have lots of grit and spunk and tell their tales of how they were kicked around and brought down, but they always picked themselves up and kept right on going. But there are plenty of other people who also did this, but their lives and their potential never fully bloomed. The stars just weren’t in the right place.

So, just a reminder not to be so hard on people who seem like losers and under-achievers. They might have thought just as creatively and struggled just as valiantly as an admirably successful person, but because of fate were always one bridge too far. For every Barack Obama or Warren Buffet or Bill Gates or Mother Theresa, for every athlete in the Olympics or performer on the superstar list, there are millions of others who had good ideas and wonderful inspirations and abilities, but just never found the morning sun.

I’ve been around long enough now to have known a guy who has been turned into bronze. This fellow was a gentleman named Charles Cummings, a former citizen and librarian of the City of Newark, NJ. Prior to his passing, Charles was the designated city historian. He was also a member of the Episcopal parish of Grace Church in downtown Newark. And that’s how our paths crossed.

I spent seven or eight years trying to feel at home in Grace Church, an old “Anglo-Catholic” congregation with deep historical roots. Those roots made Charles feel right at home. And in my attempt to likewise feel at home there, I saw Charles on most Sunday mornings. After the Mass (this was high-church English-style, complete with incense and sung gospel), I would encounter Charles at the coffee hour, exchanging polite greetings and sometimes a few lines of conversation. I knew that Charles was the city historian, but strangely enough he almost never talked about city history while at Grace. I never heard him proffer any interesting facts or stories about Newark’s past. He seemed mostly interested in the personal matters of the congregates; who was sick, who was well, who had a son graduating high school, who had been to Florida recently, who the rector (a rather touchy fellow) was upset with, etc.

I left Grace Church in the late 90s after my best friend there, Roger the elderly “sexton” (Episcopalian word for ‘live-in church building keeper’), was brutally murdered. Interestingly, it was Charles Cummings who called me with the news. I remember Charles’ expression of deep regret at the terrible tragedy: “poor, poor Roger”. Yes indeed. Not too long after Roger left the world so horribly, I stopped going to Grace, and I never saw Charles again. It turned out that Charles met a more peaceful ending a few years later, in 2005.

Not long afterward, the City and the County raised some funds so as to have a bronze bust of Charles made, for display at the renovated County complex in Newark (where I work). Just a few weeks ago, the bust was hoisted onto a pedestal and was dedicated in memory of Charles. I finally got around to spending a few moments with the bronze version of Charles this week. Here are shots of the bust and the engraving on the monument:

Well, seeing Charles cast in bronze was rather weird at first. There’s something about a bronze statue that captures a Roman emperor better than a kindly old librarian. It didn’t seem like the Charles that I remember. The above bust photo seems a bit too angular, a bit too contrasty and bold; something more in keeping with a Hannibal or an Alexander the Great.

But, having some belief in the photographer’s creed, I decided to keep shooting at different angles until the spirit of Charles was found. The two shots below come close, I think. The bust seems to convey Charles as he probably was in his early 40s; by contrast, I remember him as a gracefully aging 60-year old. Nonetheless, these two shots better convey the patient and kindly, but somewhat distant and proud nature of his personality — as I experienced it.

Unfortunately, as can be seen in the last shot, the local birds have little respect for bronzed busts, heroic or not. But then again, I’m sure that Charles would have been patient with them. Charles appreciated the great themes AND the more quotidian elements (such as pigeons and starlings) of the city that he loved.