Nobody's Property Episode 08: Civilized Tribe

“I’ve been thinking about a trip to Germany,” my father says on the phone one day. “I’m thinking I need to start thinking about Jenny in a new way.”

I’ve been thinking that too. And my father: the first thirty years of our time together are over; what are the next thirty going to be like?

What will we do in Germany? I’ve thought of going by myself, trying to find some things out. I see myself in a room with a man who was the last person to see Jenny alive. Did he kill her? Or did he just leave her by the side of the road? All these years I’ve waited for Jenny to haunt me, but she’s just kept her peace. That’s a nice way to think about it, that she’s out there somewhere keeping to herself (‘she is just away’). I know it’s not true; I know she’s gone.
But him? He was a young guy in 1971. Odds are he’s out there.

He’s the one who’s been haunting me.

Music by Kristin Hersh: kristinhersh.cashmusic.org or www.kristinhersh.com

Nobody's Property Episode 07: The Plot

Do you think you are free to live your life? We try to tell ourselves that the worst won’t happen, that we can leave the doors of our lives unlocked and the crazies won’t come through them, or if they do we can talk them down. We search the papers for the reasons behind the senseless murder—the plot. How can we still be doing this?

I grew up with the plot in my head: Jenny died hitchhiking. That was the “reason.” That was the “plot.” Her parents sent her there. That was the “pathos,” the “hook.” And so there were ways to prevent dying, to make sure it didn’t happen to you. There were rules to being safe, rather than dead, and these rules chiefly applied to women, because—let’s face it—women who don’t follow the rules don’t deserve to live.

Music by Kristin Hersh: kristinhersh.cashmusic.org or www.kristinhersh.com

Nobody's Property Episode 06: Evidence

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry
Go to sleepy little baby.
When you wake, you will find
All the pretty little horses.

Dapples and grays, pintos and bays
All the pretty little horses.

Way down yonder, in the meadow,
Poor little baby, crying “mama”.
Birds and the butterflys flutter ‘round his eyes.
Poor little baby crying “mama”.

Hush-a-bye....

Music by Kristin Hersh: kristinhersh.cashmusic.org or www.kristinhersh.com

Sorry for the crazy German accent!

Nobody's Property Episode 05: Living on the Remains

A few years ago, my father told me the story of how my Aunt Jenny's remains were shipped back to be put into different ground. Dad called me from Oklahoma to describe how my grandmother Edith stood by while workers dug up the urn from under the small brass marker that barely wrinkled the surface of the grass in Oak Park Cemetery. They opened the urn; Edith looked inside. I could see her standing there, in a tasteful suit and stockings and pumps, her light hair neatly and stiffly styled, bowing her head to see.

“There were actually quite large bone fragments mixed with the ashes," Dad said. The urn was too heavy for Edith to take on the plane from California to Oklahoma. So she shipped it U.P.S. Ground.

Music by Kristin Hersh: kristinhersh.cashmusic.org or www.kristinhersh.com

Some names may have been changed; I can't really remember.

Nobody's Property Episode 04: Base Line

After my father stopped living with Mom and me, he spent his nights in his woodshop, in the lemon packing house that my grandfather Charles owned. The remains of the citrus groves still grew all around us in Claremont, and an old guy sold wooden crates of local lemons off the loading dock of the packing house: the sole survivor. When I visited my dad's shop there, I was afraid to go to the bathroom, because it was all the way on the other side of the packing house, and the big, scarred wood floor seemed huge, while the hollow building seemed to whisper to me as I crossed it. The packing house sat on the old Santa Fe line, and freight trains would rumble past at random intervals during the day and night. Eucalyptus trees marched straight down the railroad right-of-way, and stony, stubbly fields and a few scattered industrial buildings stretched on either side of them. One night, somebody wandered in from the tracks and, while my dad slept nearby, robbed his jeans.

Music by Kristin Hersh: kristinhersh.cashmusic.org or www.kristinhersh.com

You can view some pictures of fieldstone structures just down Base Line from my old house. Seven blocks to paradise.