Tuesday, March 08, 2016
Needs a story
A new entry at the Kansas Historical Society website portrays a subject that demands more research and maybe a novel by a qualified writer. It's a 1955 photo of a man named Belmont Ariovistus** Julius Caesar Dillon, with only one sentence of explanation.
Monte Dillon, as he was commonly known, was returning from service in World War I when the motor broke down on his transport ship. It was reported that he repaired the motor from odds and ends so that the ship was able to reach the United States.
A heroic shade-tree mechanic!
The faded photo is tantalizingly ambiguous. Shows a man wearing overalls, with a full beard and a mysterious paper hat. He is either using a microphone to speak to a crowd or holding a shovel and a knife. The full beard in 1955, plus the paper hat, plus the name, would lead to a certain assumption ... but the whole picture doesn't support the assumption. Looks more like the classic village gadfly who enjoys irritating the helots. Was he using available props to show how he fixed the engine? Or just whittling the shovel handle for unknown reasons?
Needs a novel.
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** Looked up Ariovistus. He was a leader of a Germanic tribe who formed an alliance with Caesar then later pissed off Caesar, tried to make war, and lost. The two names form an inconsistent pair, sort of like John Saddam Bush Smith or Ivan Hitlerovich Stalinovich Pomorski.
Labels: Make or break
¶ 4:36 AM
