2 Responses to “Foot fetish?”

1. schoepflin says:

   April 6, 2011 at 11:01 am

   Many years ago I crossed your nation. It was beautiful and so nuanced. After awhile I used the driver side mirror on my pick up to keep on the road by sighting thru it, in reverse.

   I had heard the name Forgottonia, which was so close in sound and spelling as Forgotatonia, the name I gave to my home town, Princeton, NJ, as a little boy, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

   The Sunday Phil Equirer printed a colored map of the missile routes and targets, Wash, DC, Phil, NYC and Boston. I’d never seen a paper that wasn’t black and white before. The red, green and blue colors were something.

   Sitting outside, on the porch studying the maps I was quite engrossed in the possiblity of being incinerated within a week. I was about 8 or 9 at the time.

   My father came out and asked me what I thoguht, referring to the front page of the paper. I told him the map was beautiful and asked him if he thought we would be killed. He said, “No, I’m not certain, but I think not.”

   Looking up at him, I asked him if the missles had the same type of weapons he had helped design and build to destroy the people on the other side of the world. He gulped but said quiety, “Yes.” My father was the man that wrote the implosion calcuations to crack open the hydrogen atom and worked closely with Lyman Spitzer and John Wheeler, both of whom I knew well.

   Looking back now, he was really a very young man, asked to be the poet who brought the finishing touches on the evil of thermonuclear war, as he was a mathematician, not a physicist, none of whom could speak the language of the Universe very well. That was his duty, not their’s.

   I asked him in what direction to look and if we would see a flash, just a little flash before all around hit 8000 F. He pointed to the left, the SE. I explained I wanted to be out here, on the porch, if there was a launch I didn’t want to hide somewhere, knowing everyone would die. One missile or another would hit us, as central Jersey was in the center of the bullseye, no problem with the targeting, as there was no need to go over the North Pole, never tried by the Soviets or the Americans to date.

   My father started to protest, but I explained everyone knew who he was and what he had done at Princeton, many people were freightened and angry and if life was going to end here, then I wanted to see the Birth of Forgotatonia.

   Traveling back roads, 2 laners, gravel or paved, across North America, is as lovely and produces a smile one feels high above the clouds, dreaming of their destination, hours away. It is why I carry a camera and the lovliest thing to do.

   So when the chance came to cross central Il years ago, I just had to be carried along in your Nation. I recall it was late summer, 1980, and I was heading out east of Philadelphia and slowly made it to a small town NE of Omaha, Neb., Carroll, Iowa, my home since 1976.

   Your Nation became part of my mind’s nation, forgotatonia, and I have never had your land far from my land.

   Schoepflin
2. schoepflin says:

   April 7, 2011 at 3:07 pm

   Thank you for posting this. Over the years many have asked about my, forgotatonia, rarelt explained at all, but I saw you put it on Facebook and I appreciate that very much. Schoepflin.

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