Mere mortals stand knee-high to Johnny Kaw, a pile of (of what? public statuary? civic yard art? that is what you were going to say, wasn't it?) concrete and plaster that guards the southeast corner of our city park across the street from the fire station and city hall. (It just struck me that this is the only intersection in town at which vehicles may not turn right on a red light, probably in deference to the fire trucks rather than to Johnny, I think. Can't be sure though.) Given a few tons of concrete and rebar, a few gallons of plaster and paint, I suppose that something very like Johnny Kaw would arise from my own communal consciousness. Or unconsciousness. Which would it be, anyway? That it might emerge from either one would be frightening.

I suspect that Johnny was the creation of a booster or of a gaggle of boosters who believed that by fabricating a legend along the lines of Paul Bunyan and representing that legend on a grand scale, they would promote tourism to the region. Come see the giant ...um...farmer with the Richard Carpenter helmet-hair!

The legend of Johnny Kaw never caught on with the average transcontinental traveler. I should add that I know no locals who can recount Johnny's deeds in verse or prose either. Johnny does provide our local youth with an opportunity to practice decorating with toilet paper, an area of design sadly neglected by our local schools. I have, of course, no firsthand knowledge of this; I've only heard of it from a friend of a friend, in the way that rumor wends its way to legend.

Local huckstering of the kind represented by Johnny Kaw isn't limited to small towns in the U.S. I had the photo of Johnny ready to go when I came across an entry by the writer of the journal Inertia, who does a much more incisive job than I have here of deriding just this kind of boosterism in a hilarious entry from June 5th about a migration of fiberglass moose into Toronto.

Tuesday night after supper, O., T. and I headed for the public libary. They returned with books about medieval times and about natural disasters. I brought home another Willie Morris (My Cat Spit McGee), and two by John Bayley (Elegy for Iris and Iris and Her Friends), memoirs about life with Iris Murdoch, his wife.