Ding Dong

1893, Chicago World's Fair. We are making course in an Unlikely Balloon over the stock yards.



"Yes, here," continued the Professor, nodding down at the Yards as they began to flow by beneath, "here's where the Trail comes to its end at last, along with the American Cowboy who used to live on it and by it. No matter how virtuous he's kept his name, how many evildoers he's managed to get by undamaged, how he's done by his horses, what girls he has chastely kissed, serenaded by guitar, or gone out and raised hallelujah with, it's all back there in the traildust now and none of it matters, for down there you'll find the wet convergence and finale of his drought-struck tale and thankless calling. Buffalo Bill's Wild West show stood on its head -- spectators invisible and silent, nothing to be commemorated, the only weapons in view being Blitz Instruments and Wackett Punches to knock the animals out with, along with the blades everybody is packing, of course, and the rodeo clowns jabber on in some incomprehensible lingo not to distract the beast but rather to heighten and maintain its attention to the single task at hand, bringing it down to those last few gates, the stunning-devices waiting inside, the butchering and blood just beyong the last chute -- and the cowboy with him. Here." He handed Lew a pair of field-glasses. "That little charabanc down there just making the turn off Forty-Seventh?"

Thomas Pynchon, "Against the Day", 2006.

"Say, Mother, come have a look at these poor bastards!"

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Oh my dear, how derjah said. We all knew all that already.