Champion

Champion

After hearing the stories about my great great grandfather, Champion
The guy who the uppity us referred to when touting our ancestry;
The Mayor of Omaha, the colonel who vaguely looks like me
I thought about how they all added up in my mind and heart
And I realized there was something ironic and worth taking note of here;
The stories, each colorful, conflicted in a weave that begged some questions
Such as who are we and who do we think we are and who was he
And how did he impact us for so long ago?

The first was about how he was at the last Sun Dance ceremony in Nebraska
And had stolen a sacred object; a spear, a scalp or some such item
And the incensed natives chased him wildly on horseback
The one I had always heard was that he and his son were invited guests
And that it was a great experience, etc. at least for young Clement.

Another was about how he was not re-elected to be the mayor
After being one for quite some time unspecified here
And why that was; one version that a close official on his cabinet
Had taken or given bribes to sorted folks, like prostitutes
Another version was that he was so grieved about the death of his lovely wife
Our great great grandmother who, along with him, came, ancestrally,
On the Mayflower with two relatives, each
….that he was arrested for public drunken-ness, thus sealing his re-elective doom.

The second story might explain why, in my beloved tea totaling
Grandmother’s family……her father being a society printer…
…was often given containers of alcohol….and that they
“Came in the front door and then went right out the back”…
Suggesting, in my view, some trouble with alcohol.
Being of a recovery persuasion, I perked up my ears.

A third story came my way the other day, and that is the one
I find most interesting, somehow; you see, when my grandmother’s sister
Carmelita was in her grandfather’s study….Champion’s,
She was left alone in there with a bowl of enticing goodies, like cookies or candy,
And she took the liberty of having one or two, as it were ..
And grandpa came back in and asked her if she had taken any.
She just shook her head, it seems, and then was given a long
Tirade lecture about the evils of lying
He then told her that telling lies would damage her soul and corrupt her character,
That telling lies would weigh on her conscience and make her life unhappy,
That one must always tell the truth and that if one did not, it would be discovered,
And she would never be trusted and how the soul and
Credibility would be eroded, etc. and chase you around for a long time, etc.
So sternly, it seems, she never lied again and neither can her granddaughter
..not very well, it seems, as she , too , heard the story at a similarly tender moment in time.

The stories have an eerie ring, when taken all together
Whether Champion learned his lessons the hard way
As those in my family are wont to do
Or we are projecting an aweful lot, airing our tendencies and fears

A story that I know to be true, because of documentation of various sorts
Was the one I like the best and feel closest to;
That Champion, the lawyer (or liar as my wife’s attorney-laden family spells it)
Had successfully defended 10 Indians who were charged with murder
And they had presented…… two pieces of artwork done
While they were in prison, in a sort of colored pencils
On thick-ish paper, not the often seen “ledger” paper, but in the same
Plains Indian style, like on their teepees
Depicting Pawnees Chasing Sioux, what with spears and guns and horses…..
To Champion to give to his son, my great grandfather, the very same…Clement
This is the one I like to think we can learn the most from and can treasure as fact.

If you take the tales and cut and splice and interpolate and edit for lack of fact
And notice who told the tales of choice, then the multi-dimensional
Time-Sculpture begins to appear in all its deep spell
Steeped in irony and something to pass on down, well,
Somehow.



PS. The other one I like is about the other side of the family and my grandfather, long since dead, who was depicted as frail and sickly, but kind and loving…..
Well it seems he was on a wild and wooly adventure to scope out a new state park in
British Columbia as a young man; canoeing up violent rivers, porting boats on rough terrain,
Hanging around mythically rugged characters and documenting the whole episode besides. And so out goes the myth of the sickly grandpa and in with the famous adventurer
Who will now be published by admiring offspring.