The Johnson Museum on Cornell’s campus has a room full of Goya prints currently on display. I planned on taking the day off and driving down there to see the show and celebrate my birthday but we had some work that just had to be done this morning so we got a late start. We didn’t take the most direct route either because we avoided the thruway and drove through Canandagua and then down the east side of Seneca Lake toward Watkins Glen. We were driving through Dundee when Peggi said, “I wonder how your aunt and uncle are.” They live in a farmhouse at Starkey’s Corners and we were a stone’s throw away so we stopped by to visit.
My aunt answered the door and showed us the new coal stove in their kitchen. My uncle was sleeping in a chair in the next room and he woke up with all the commotion. He said “Come in and sit down. I’ll put my teeth in.” The four of us sat down on the porch and my uncle talked to me while my aunt talked to Peggi. Two conversations at the same time, both full of tales of yesteryear. He was telling me how tugboats towed barges loaded with salt or ice up the lake and into the Erie Canal while my aunt was telling Peggi how she had been back to her old neighborhood on Rochester’s west side and how everything had changed. My uncle pointed to a painting on their wall of stereotypical Irishmen in green suits with whimsical pipes walking along the canal with horses that were hitched to a barge.
My aunt is also my godmother and I have always had a soft spot for her. She was a nurse at Saint Mary’s when my uncle was brought there because of a farm accident. One of my earliest memories was going to their wedding. They’ve lived on this farm since and it was my favorite place to visit as a kid. It still looks exactly the same but they’ve sold their property to a group of Mennonites who work the land and let my aunt and uncle continue to live in their old house.
We usually park in the Ithaca Municipal Garage and then walk up the hill to Cornell but this time we drove up and got sort of lost. We were across from the hillside where Personal Effects played back in the day when we asked for directions. It reminded us of Dunn Meadow at IU. She said we were on the wrong side of campus. The museum closed at five so we had only forty five minutes to see the show but it was an intense forty five minutes. Goya is often called the first modern artist. His work is every bit as gripping and relevant today as it must have been in the late 1700’s. “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.” A perfect birthday gift.
Listen to Margaret Explosion “Sleep of Reason.”
