Denison Daily News, February 3, 1878. Strange and affecting enough, I suppose, in the era of baby farming. The long beard is a nice touch, but how long is long? Longer than three feet?
As an instance of maternal impression, this is oddly nebulous, lacking the Just So Stories exactitude one is conditioned to expect. There needs to be a better morphological link between the fire and the condition of the child. Speaking of maternal impression, I haven’t until now created a tag or formal thread for that interesting theme, and must now correct this oversight.
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3 Comments
yes, but affecting *how*? It seems to me our reporter disapproves: if they could keep him concealed for 27 years, why not just off him at birth and conceal that instead?
Also–given a long beard, why “it”? A delicate effort to suggest intersexuality as a part of the picture?
Further evidence that the X-Files invented nothing. The Peacock family lives!
It seems to me our reporter disapproves:
At minimum, you can hear him scratching his head and thinking “Different strokes for different folks.”
The Peacock family lives!
That show’s finest hour.
I spent my late boyhood (age 11 through 15) in a small town in Nova Scotia. It was a hillbilly-Gothic milieu, stuck somewhere between the 1950s and Elizabethan times. There was this family up the street, mater familias of which was an elderly and staunchly Christian lady who looked after: an incredibly ancient and blind husband at least twice her age; an adopted paraplegic daughter (a classmate of mine in the local junior high); an adopted microcephalic dwarf son who looked to be about 8 years old but was actually twice that age; a baby with no brain to speak of, permanently hooked up to a enormous and noisy respiratory device. It was nice that somebody was taking care of all of these needy cases, obviously, but the atmosphere of theological gloom and sacrifice in that house was beyond oppressive. Especially if you were high on ditchweed and gazed at that baby too long.
What’s the difference between “a clean condition” and this article’s claim of “a cleanly condition”? Was this article written by that crazy lady from “Borderlands” who keeps saying “You smell oddly.”? (How? Through my feet?)
Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go — I have butter cookies!